RetroPinionator

SIGNS OF THE TIMES (PAST)

2006-09-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: YMC ESSENTIALS (YOSHITOSHI)

2001-07-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

Futures never last, because there are always new ones. But some futures are too delicious to lose, like the lovely ambient dreamworld conjured during the '70s and '80s by people like Brian Eno, Harold Budd, and even Vangelis. What was it that made this world so appealing-- pleasure? peace? opulence? Whatever it was, it inspired a lot of us, including two Swedish guys who hooked up in 1995, Yan (a.k.a. Jan Lutgebaucks) and Cpook-E (a.k.a. Erik Svahn, whose nickname is pronounced "spooky"-- and not to be confused with DJ Spooky, a.k.a Paul Miller). The duo appeared on the scene in 1998 with The YMC EP (Yoshitoshi) and followed up with "candy trance" (my word!) must-haves like The Moody Traxx EP (Force Inc US), The Nu Mood EP (Plastic City), The Satellite Traxx EP (Plackdown Sounds), and Nu Directions (Nepenta).

Now YMC has released YMC Essentials (Yoshitoshi), which looks like a "greatest hits" with new stuff. If you care about the quality of your own future-- at least, the rest of your summer-- you'll want to check it out. The CD is like a midnight drive along a tropical shore road in a glamorous convertible, toward a secret pavilion-- though the banal titles of the album's twelve tracks ("Mist," "Morning Lake," "Phuture Vibes," etc.) barely hint at the transcendent, translucent musical tissue YMC weaves. Primarily beat-driven, these tracks don't bring you to that luxuriously lazy place where Vangelis and Budd often wound up. Instead, they combine today's more forward-pulsing, not-so-eternal energy with several of the higher-consciousness effects that were so prized by "new age" composers and DJs: gauzy, weatherish echos suggesting dimensions beyond the usual three; open hearted, semi-robotic vocals that bypass the conscious mind and go straight into the bloodstream; plus, of course, your standard crystalline glints. The result? YMC gives us a future to live with, for now....

NYC MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI HAS ANOTHER ART ATTACK

2001-02-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

New York's most powerful art hater, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is at it again. According to the New York Times, "disgusting" and "outrageous" is how Giuliani describes a 15-foot photographic depiction of the Last Supper by distinguished black photographic artist Renee Cox. The work, entitled "Yo Mama's Last Supper," on view at the Brooklyn Museum as part of an exhibition of photographers by 94 black photographers, features the artist herself, in the nude, as the Christ figure.

We just came back from the Brooklyn, where we saw the exhibition, which is called "Committed to the Image." It's pretty good, incorporating the work of Anthony Barboza, Martin Dixon, and the great Gordon Parks; you should definitely check it out. You may remember that the Brooklyn Museum was the scene of Mayor Giuliani's last art attack. In 1999 he tried to close the Museum after it debuted its "Sensation" show, because black artist Chris Ofili had dared to use elephant dung as an artistic material in his wonderfully powerful "Holy Virgin Mary."

Like Ofili, Cox says she was raised Catholic and has issues with that, and it makes sense that those issues would be part of what her investigations as an artist are about, right? Art is supposed to look fearlessly at ourselves and the world and bring us forward into a greater understanding of our humanity, right? Well, don't go telling that to Mayor Giuliani. Apparently he thinks art should look pretty and just sit there. Artist Cox's reaction to the Mayor's attack, according to the Times, was, "Get over it. I don't produce work that necessarily looks good over somebody's couch."

Giuliani was raised a Catholic, too, though it's clear that he's in danger of never even getting close to his issues (which include mistaking of sanctimony for reverence, and prudery for decency). Hating shit that can get you to the next level is pretty bad. That's why we think Giuliani deserves our pity more than our anger.

R.I.P. SMOKING BADDY ALEXANDER SPEARS III

2001-02-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

Guess who died? Smoking baddy Alexander Spears III, who testified before Congress in 1994, along with a lot of other top cigarette executives, that he believed nicotine was not addictive and didn't cause disease. Of course, nicotine is highly addictive and does cause disease. Spears, who served as both chairman and chief executive of Lorillard, died of lung cancer at the age of 68.

We say that Spears is a baddy, but on the community level the Greensboro, N.C. resident was actually a pretty responsible, socially progressive citizen. According to the New York Times, he served as fund-raiser for the Girl Scouts, the United Negro College Fund, and Greensboro Historical Museum. Spears also served on the boards of the local United Way and the National Conference for Community and Justice, which is dedicated to fighting racism in America. So it looks like it was just his involvement with an evil corporate agenda-- coupled, perhaps, with a huge salary-- that warped the thinking of this basically good man and caused him to counteract his good works with bad ones, like trying to secretly increase the nicotine levels of his cigarettes.

As we've said before, there are lots of great reasons to smoke, but there's no sense in lying about the downside. On Satan's Patented Scale-O'-Sin, lying is definitely worse than smoking.

Check Your Stuff?

2001-01-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

You know the feeling. You're in a bar or a lounge, and you're talking to friends and new people are arriving, and you're greeting newcomers and moving around a a bit, and suddenly you're totally not standing where you were 45 minutes ago, when you arrived, and you're like, Where's my shit? You didn't check your coat and bag, because this is a bar/lounge and not a club proper (where you'd visit the coat check, 'cause you're making a night of it), so when you arrived you just plopped your stuff down somewhere. Uh, now where was that?

You look around and you say "Excuse me for a second" to the people you're talking to. If you haven't had too many cocktails yet, you do realize where your shit is and go retrieve it with no problem. You smile at the strangers who were sitting near your shit and suddenly you feel a little guilty for having suspected these nice people, or people like them, of felonious intentions. And, since you've have had at least one cocktail, you do decide that people are basically honest and, like you, just want to have a good time. As you make your way back to your to the conversation you were having, shit safely in hand, you reproach yourself for your petty, materialist panic and decide to rededicate yourself to Higher Ideals, the key to which, of course, is a genial toast with other fellow human beings-- except that the people you were talking to have disappeared and now you must make your toast with other fellow human beings.

And you think, What the hell? Other human beings it is! And you say hello to somebody new and buy him or her a drink, comfortable in the knowledge that your one-of-a-kind bag and designer coat and expensive phone and precious papers are all right there in plain sight. With the peace that only serving as your own policeman can confer, you chatter on about humanity and brotherhood and stuff like that....

TOBACCO OVERLORDS TRAP NEW TEEN SLAVES-- BUT EVERYTHING'S COOL.

2001-01-24T09:07:00.000-08:00

High school students may have made some progress in areas like social tolerance and sexual identity, but as far as smoking goes it's like the 1950s out there. Smoking kills but, hey, it's cool. Seduced by sophisticated advertising and marketing campaigns that are ten times more nefarious than the Bush campaign, yet welcomed into the subconscious, kids are puffing up a storm-- and they're starting early. According to the New York Times, a new study shows that 12.8% of students starting in middle school in the fall were "established smokers." By the following summer, 15.2% of them were smokers. ("Established smoker" means that you've smoked on at least 20 of the previous 30 days and you've had more than 100 cigarettes in your life. Nine percent of kids between 11 and 19 are established smokers.)

Why'd they start? Well, to fit in--and because they couldn't think of any less harmful or more creative ways to do so. Obviously, the enlightened, analytical resistance that challenged racism, sexism and (to some degree) homophobia could still be applied to that blindness-producing, peer-pressure susceptibility we might call "coolism."

Not that we hate smoking. We don't. We just think that if you're gonna be into it, at whatever age, you should embrace and enjoy it for what it is-- a kind of slavery to corporate agendas-- which plenty of people we know do, in a perverse, sickly conscious way (which transforms their smoking an ongoing performance piece of the Ron Athey school).

P4M REVIEW: THE BRUKNAHM PROJECT, VOLUME ONE: URBAN WORLDBEAT

2001-01-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, an album comes along that really points the way. The Bruknahm Project, Volume One: Urban Worldbeat is one of those albums. Brainchild of composer/producers Saundi Wilson and Sebastian "SibaGiba" Bardin, with Bruknahm progenitor Guka Evans, the album is as much philosophy as a collection of musical numbers, deftly proving how far forward music today can go-- now that we are exposed daily to rap, reggae, raga, tango, gaelic folk, and moody '60s French film scorage; and, more importantly, now that our taste for and understanding of various kinds of so-called world music has evolved beyond the speciously "exotic."

Cuts like "Lester Left Town" (incorporating trumpet skywriting by Cecil Young and excerpts from an interview with jazz great Lester Bowie), "Loft Session" (with craggy horn abstractions crashing down into deep string thunks), and "Jihad" (pure, pulsing momentum fueled by beat and a woman's chanting) are tenets of faith to be studied and promulgated. But don't get me wrong: The Bruknahm Project is supremely listenable. For me, this album has already passed the ten-listens test and I'm still charting new dimensions. And I think that's because although TheBruknahm Project takes off from a jazz point of view-- Wilson's roots are in jazz; his father was drummer Phillip Wilson-- it goes to a place beyond where those estimable-but-not-always-listenable brainiac-jazz albums often go. The very generous aim of this project seems to be to give pleasure, not to instruct, thank you.

NUCLEAR ENERGY REDUX: IS ANYONE DEBATING SAFETY STANDARDS?

2000-12-21T09:39:00.001-08:00

Ten years ago, when the number of nuclear power plants in the U.S. reached its peak of 110, it looked as though economics alone would eventually shut down the nuclear power industry. Plants were hugely expensive to build and maintain, given government regulations. Then, of course, there was the fact that decades of debate about the safety of nuclear power and the disposal of nuclear waste had soured the public on the fantasy of clean, abundant, affordable power.

But nuclear energy isn't dead yet. In the last decade, almost sixty reactors have, according to the New York Times, "quietly received the [Nuclear Regulatory] commission's permission to increase heat output and thus electric production"-- in other words, deregulation. What that means, given recent electricity shortages and the soaring price of natural gas, is that nuclear power has become more cost effective-- a fact that thrills many planners in that industry. Plants that have strained the bank accounts of their original builder/owners are now being bought by new owners who are making the plants more profitable under today's economy. At the same time, both new and old owners are pushing their plants harder and running them longer between down-times than ever before. The Times reports that one plant "now shuts for refueling every 18 months [while]... in the 1970s and 1980s, it would shut down every year for 60 or 70 days."

The Times also reports that "in the early days, emergency shutdowns came every couple of months of so; now they are so infrequent plant managers remember each one, and every manual shutdown." Which says to us that in an effort to make an economic go of it this time, plant owners are redefining safety-- in their terms, and without as much public input as when this was a burning issue.

We don't know what the safety standards should be; do you? Does anybody know how to re-think the whole issue of safety, when it comes to nuclear power? The point is that there is precious little public discussion of this issue and it's time to get one going again-- especially since our track lights and stereo systems and refrigerators and hair dryers, and the plants that manufacture our cell phones and batteries and cars and sneakers, are using more power than ever. Some nuclear plants are 40 years old and are being re-licensed for another 20 years; parts of their structure are decaying, yet because of computers and new materials used for repairs, owners are saying that plants are safer than ever. One one hand, that may be true. On the other, has anyone solved the problem of disposal of nuclear waste? Aren't we still just planning to cram it down the throat of Mother Earth, even if in some remote spot that's in nobody's back yard? Aren't we still kinda soft-pedaling the fact that's been staring us in the face ever since nuclear power began-- that the waste is the most toxic substance ever known and it stays toxic for millennia?

Reports From The Lush Culture

2000-12-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Sauce Therapy
This Week's Guest Columnist: Lucia T.

This is your week, sauce maniacs-- lush culture's high holy days-- but we want you to get through it with a minimum of suffering, so let us give you a little advice.

- Stick with "goal drinking."
Know where you're going with alcohol, strategically, and pace yourself appropriately for the trip. Starting the party early on New Year's Eve? Maybe you wanna go easy on the distilled spirits until after midnight, when you'll be expected to make less sense. (Note: Make sure any business conversation you need to have with the limo driver is done before you compromise that famously sharp mind of yours.) Going out with someone special? Stay in "drink sync" with your date-- meaning that both of you should try to keep both your consumption at the same pace.

- Avoid any drink with "nog" in the title.
Webster's defines "nog" as "a strong ale formerly brewed in Norfolk, England," but what we're mainly talking about eggnog, consisting of eggs beaten with sugar, milk or cream, and often alcoholic liquor. That shit is so delicious that you can drink too much of it before realizing how sickening it is, so we think you should stay away from it. Also avoid, for the same reason, creamy/fruity liqueurs.

- Never mix, never worry.
Actually, this has been proven untrue, hasn't it? Some people seem to be able to drink all kinds of drinks throughout the night and stay fine, while others stick to their favorite stuff and still get sick. Now that we think of it, we think the rule should be: always mix and always worry (in the existential sense of the words "mix" and "worry").

- Count your drinks.
It's as simple as it sounds: Know whether you're on your third or your fourth, your tenth or your twelfth. Here's why: Over time, you'll get a better idea of cause-and-effect, as in, "I start slurring my speech after my fifth scotch" and "I black out after my eighth vodka." If you're smart, this information will come in handy someday, like when you finally decide to avoid slurring, blackouts, or ARIs (those mysterious alcohol-related injuries-- scrapes and bruises-- you sometimes wake up with). Counting is also a good idea because when your count goes to hell, you'll know you're in trouble.

Before going to bed (or passing out):

- Take two Advils (or three).
Aspirin works well, but we find that Advil works better. This will help keep those tiny blood vessels in your head from squeezing shut.

- Drink plenty of water.
This keeps you from dehydrating, which is one of the bad things that alcohol does to your body. When we're really blotto, we try to drink, like, a gallon of water before going to bed because the first and subsequent trips to the bathroom serve as opportunities for even more water intake, adding a nicely therapeutic program to our sleep cycle.

Favorite moment on New Year's Day: It comes around twilight, at 5 or 6 in the afternoon. After complaining about how much you drank the night before and how nice it will be not to drink today, you reason that since it is a holiday maybe a little drink wouldn't be such a bad idea. And after pouring yourself a glass of something, you discover that it's a great idea....

Reports From The Lush Culture

2000-12-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

SAUCE THERAPY
This Week's Guest Columnist: Lucia T.

Advertising's not a bad thing. Neither is alcohol. But given America's puritanical heritage, advertising for alcohol has always been viewed with suspicion by high-ranking pleasure-haters. After Prohibition-- can you believe that anybody ever tried to outlaw liquor? they must have been on drugs to think they could do it!-- beer and wine ads sneaked back into the media, but the hard liquor industry had a tougher time, observing a self-imposed ban on radio and then TV advertising.

Did you realize that ban was voluntary? A lot of people don't. Well, it was voluntary, but happily the ban was dropped in 1996 and ads for vodka, gin, whiskey, and other spirits have been sneaking onto TV. The ads appear on local stations, during appropriate time slots, aimed at appropriate audiences, of course-- meaning late-night, adults-only. According to the New York TImes, more than 100 local television stations in nearly 90 markets have agreed to take Seagram's advertising." The Times also reports that ads for a brand much loved around Platform offices, Jack Daniels, have appeared in Miami, Las Vegas, and other local markets, on NBC, Fox, and CBS, during shows like "E.R." and "West Wing." So while most cable and network TV channels still carry no liquor ads, it's only a matter of time before they all do, nationally, for several reasons:

1) Beer and wine have enjoyed an unfair advantage.
Hard liquor manufacturers have always complained loudly that they're at a competitive disadvantage, without the kind of TV and radio advertising that beer and wine can do, and they're right. Liquor is no "dirtier" than wine and beer. If we associate gin with flopping alone in hallways of inner city, single-room-occupancy hotels and wine with hosting dinner-tables of dear friends on warm, sophisticated evenings in beautifully restored, vintage suburban homes, then it's because we've gotten suckered into a fantasy. The reality is that dissolute alcoholics come from both sides of the tracks and are likely to drink anything.

2) TV needs ad revenues.
Media outlets have never been more strapped for advertising revenue, especially the so-called minority media, which have been misunderstood or overlooked by many advertisers. The spread of liquor advertising is gonna be great for minority media. Sure, racist marketers have traditionally exploited alcoholism (and tobacco addiction!) in minority communities by seducing consumers with "sophisticated lifestyle" ads. But nowadays everybody's waking up to those growing numbers of increasingly affluent (and intelligent!) urban consumers, so it's a sure bet that liquor advertisers have their eyes on the WB and UPN.

3) People like fun commercials.
In print, liquor ads have been pretty creative. In the attempt to get away from the negative "drink and you'll get drunk" message, many advertising creative directors have pioneered genius campaigns, like the famous conceptual one that marketing legend Michel Roux did for Absolut. Can you imagine how much fun a 30-second TV spot for a liquor brand would be if done as a mini film noir or a mini hiphop music video?

Of course, when liquor does arrive on mainstream TV it will be in ads that have been created and deployed with conspicuous responsibility. Models and actors will clearly be over 21 (or over 25, as is currently promised by Allied Domecq, which have TV campaigns for Kahlua, Crown Royal, and Chivas); targetted audiences will also be older; time slots will be late-prime time to late-night. And you know what? I think we'll manage to respond to these ads just as responsibly and not immediately go out and gulp ourselves into a vomit-laced blackout.

THE OPINIONATOR ON.... PRISON POPULATIONS AS A GROWING MARKET FOR GROOVY NEW CONSUMER GOODS

2000-12-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

Convenient, isn't it? America's prison population has swelled so scandalously huge-- 1.3 million people in state and Federal institutions in 1999!--that this population now constitutes an important business market. Prisons have always meant profits for specialized enterprises, like companies that make institutional furniture and construction companies that build new facilities. But now Zenith, Koss, and other more consumer-oriented companies are getting into the act, with see-through and other specially-designed TVs, headphones, shavers, etc.

Transparent housings for small appliances and electronic equipment means that no drugs or knives can be smuggled or stored inside, see? Other modifications also incorporated into special prison-models items are: no antennas (since those can stab), and no remotes (because those can be repurposed into bomb detonators). According to headphone-maker Koss, as reported recently in the New York Times, the cord used in one of their prison-headphone models has to be "a bit weaker than usual so it can't be used as a garrote, for permanently silencing a guard or cellmate." And special lines of "prison-sensitive" goods are not the only growth areas for business. Zenith has been making an absolutely groovy-looking transparent prison TV for four years now, and it didn't take long for somebody at the company to realize that it might be able to cash in on a line of transparent TVs for the unincarcerated, a la iMac.

Koss is one of the few companies with significant prison sales ($1 million annually) that is willing to talk about this aspect of their business. According to the Times, the rest are quieter not because they find this business morally questionable ("How comfortable should convicted criminals be while trying to quote-unquote rehabilitate themselves?") but because they don't want to attract competitors. This is a lucrative market that the established guys want to themselves. Now, we don't know if this business is morally questionable or not, and we certainly don't think that if it were, anyone would stop because of that. We're looking kinda eagerly forward to a wave of prison chic-- functionally designed objects that are transparent, soft, and harmless. We're also expecting America's cheerful complicity in racist/classist agendas within the legal system to continue full-steam-ahead-- keeping the prison population rising (in combination with people's stupidity, anger, and just-plain-evilness) at the rate of 10% per year!

Lucia to Ricky Martin on... The Whole Gay Thing

2000-11-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

MEMO: 11-24-00

TO: RICKY MARTIN, POP MUSIC IDOL
FROM: LUCIA TOLEDO, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

RE: THE GAY THING (SORRY!)

Ricky, honey, ya gotta stop fluffing the gay question the way you did again in Entertainment Weekly cover story. Granted, Jeff Gordinier's scrutiny-lite brand of journalism didn't make it hard for you to do so, but you gotta say either you are gay or you aren't. Your career is at stake. (And if you don't know what you are, that falls under, You're gay.)

If you are, Ricky, please remember that you're not Clinton. You can't say, OK, I lied but I'm still the most powerful man in the world. Your fans are eventually gonna decide that, Hey, he defiled love and his very soul by lying or at least misleading us about both of them, so how can we believe a word he sings? They're gonna say, I can't believe he didn't tell us first! See, it's not a penis thing, really. It's about truth and trust-- and I think you should be concerned about those things because, as an artist, that's where your power is.

Lemme give ya some advice. Don't keep thinking first about your fans. Most of them assume on some level that you're gay anyway, because science says that the only entertainers who don't answer the gay question, or bullshit around it with "What does it matter?" philosophizing, are gay. (Straight entertainers somehow never neglect to establish their straightness, even when delivering the same "What does it matter?" type stuff.) Try to think a little bit more about yourself, about how many spiritual and emotional resources you're sapping away from creativity (and your deeper happiness!) by maintaining that sanctimonious, shame-scented ambiguity.

The reason I'm telling you this is because I think you're a wonderful performer and I want to see you keep growing. I swear, if you're just another pretty boy who can't think things through, I'll be so disappointed. (Uh, question, if you are gay: Have you totally written off those larger opportunities for service to humanity that people like Ellen and Elton report lurk just beyond the shadows? You might wanna examine that-- because you seem like a well-meaning person who could maybe do something important if he got a bigger idea of what we're doing on the planet.)

Oh, and Ricky, you're only gonna make things worse if you hype this yoga thing too much, like you do in the EW piece. Correct me if I'm wrong, but yoga is about is about the connection between body and mind. It posits the body as a measure of truth, which is kinda the opposite of the message you've been sending by saying, What difference does it make if I'm gay." Think about it, OK?

(To tell ya the truth, I kinda hope you're not gay. Because if you are, after you come out the only guys who'll date you are the ones who don't care that you lied for so long, and I'll bet they're a pretty shabby lot....)

P4M MOVIE REVIEW: Being John Malkovich, by Spike Jonze

2000-11-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

This is not a review. This is a warning. Skip this movie and you'll miss out on a turning point in the history of the American mind.

Spike Jonze's debut feature, Being John Malkovich, is the kind of sweet but poisonous meditation on the nature of existence that Woody Allen keeps trying to deliver but hasn't got the creative audacity to imagine. The premise is simple: loser-slash-puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusak) takes a shit job and finds, behind a lost door, a supernatural portal into the consciousness of actor-slash-cult figure John Malkovich. The portal allows fifteen-minute sessions in Malkovich's ongoing life, which Craig sells to people for $200 a shot, together with his business partner-slash-girlfiend Maxine (Catherine Keener). Meanwhile, Craig's wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) falls in love with Maxine when Lotte repeatedly visits Malkovich's body and Malkovich repeatedly fucks Maxine-- no more absurd, really, than those "trick" premises that begin Kafka's works, after which all proceeds with fucked-up normality.

Only this is not Modern European Literature 102. This is a commercial American movie that happens to be our era's most philosophically sophisticated look at incarnation: what it means to be ourselves. From the opening titles-- a preposterous but moving dream sequence of a puppet dance theater piece about existential discontent-- to the final credits-- in which poor Craig's curse of consciousness is mitigated by an unexpected form of baptism-- Being John Malkovich shows what happens when identity and desire are radically unhinged from the corporeal self and the blobby, bloody history of the body. Maybe a subject this big needed a director from the world of TV commercials and music videos (Bjork and Nike! The Pharcyde and Nissan! poetry and economy!) to make it fly.

Can a movie this modern succeed when basically nineteenth-century stories like The Sixth Sense are raking in millions? I'm telling you: Being John Malkovich is gonna do more than rake in dough. It's gonna help change the way we think.

CUSTOMIZED CEREAL AT MYCEREAL.COM-- BUT NOT FOR US

2000-11-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

Cereal sales have been slumping, but our friends at General Mills have come up with an idea that may boost them: www.mycereal.com, where consumers will be able to customize cereals according to their own tastes and health needs. From among a million possible combinations of texture, taste, ingredients, etc., you'll be able to create your own custom cereal and have it shipped to your home for around a dollar per serving-- which is way more than most of the 250 or so cereals currently on the market, but worth it if you love the stuff, right?

Customized cereal sounds like fun. Only problem is: if you go to www.mycereal.co, right now, you're greeted by a warm picture of a loving mom and her little daughter, a prompt for an access code or password, plus a message saying that General Mills hopes we understand their need to limit users at this time. Oh, you think, I'm apparently not within the target market that General Mills hopes will respond best to this gimmick, or I would have received my access code in my December issue of Redbook, or something like that. But what the heck, you try to continue anyway, assuming that General Mills must be smart enough to have figured out a way to reward those who arrive at the mycereal site from beyond the target market-- say, as a result of positive word-of-mouth. But no. You get a screen asking if the company may notify you when "we're open to the public"-- meaning that they'll be happy to capture your email address but they won't let you play today. (Unlike the custom Nikes site, where you can play to your heart's content with silhouettes, color ways, and amusing personalized inscriptions-- a game that itself builds brand interest and loyalty.)

It's all done very politely, but at mycereal.com you wind up feeling a little excluded from the customized cereal adventure-- and exiled from the embrace of that loving mom. Oh well, you figure, guess I'll just keep to myself (and to my generation!) the great idea that I have for a new breakfast cereal: Eat The Parents, delicious little apron-clad mom and briefcase-toting dad morsels, formulated with higher protein and lower sugar than any other cereal, so it becomes the downright healthiest choice on America's supermarket shelf....

P4M BOOK REVIEW: 1000 ON 42ND STREET, PHOTOGRAPHS BY NEIL SELKIRK (POWERHOUSE BOOKS)

2000-11-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

For a look at the authentic face of New York that will restore your faith in humanity, check out 1000 on 42nd Street, a new book of photo portraits by Neil Selkirk. The book consists of page after page of color head shots of ordinary people (plus a few famous ones), taken outdoors, during the day, against a white backdrop at the entrance of an old Times Square theater during the summer of 1997, just as plans were being completed for the renovation of the neighborhood by the 42nd Street Development Project, which sponsored Selkirk. The people were anyone who happened to walk by. They signed a release and wrote down where they were from and what they were doing there. Their portraits were then made into posters and hung in groups on fences surrounding the many construction sites that then filled the area.

The project was popular-- and it did a lot to popularize the Development Project itself: big-bad, naughty-bawdy 42nd Street humanized, for everyone again! The people in the pictures are smiling or not; they're posing or not; their hair, make-up, jewelry, clothing, headgear, and/or dental work are either interesting from a style point of view or not; they either seem to get a sense of historical specialness about the moment or not. Which was all part of the point, as envisioned by the philosopher-slash-art director who dreamed up the project, Tibor Kalman. Recently claimed by cancer while enjoying acclaim during middle age, Kalman served as the 42nd Street Development Project's "architectural and cultural guru" and had a way, in all his work, of making strong yet simple graphic and design statements that revealed vigorously de-cliched views of humanity. (Kalman was the creative director of the magazine Benetton used to put out, Colors.)

1000 on 42nd Street presents 300 full-size Selkirk portraits, plus, reproduced on the book's fold-out covers, hundreds more in miniature. Looking at the book one page at a time is like staring at one of those abstract pictures that's supposed to suddenly snap into three-dimensionality. You're looking, you're looking, then BANG!, you see something totally unexpected. And that is what warmly smirky Alexandra ("going to a meeting") and slyly reticent Doctor Dre ("making hits!") have in common. It's what unites sadly tearful Reggie, a guy from Brooklyn ("just walkin around"), and annoyingly self-promoting Nikki, the vitamin-peddling ex-celebutante from East 68th Street ("going to a GNC to buy Star Caps"). It's what obviously outgoing Raul from Astoria ("passing through") shares with uncharacteristically diffident New York Post columnist Cindy from Fifth Avenue ("because she loves the city"). And it's why tender little Julia ("trying to scalp tickets to The Lion King") and tough-looking Lester ("I don't know"), by the sheer fact of both having been photographed by Selkirk in the summer of 1997, enjoy only one degree of separation: the need to be part of the action, civilization's rawest material.

SUNKEN TREASURE AND HIP-HOP MAKE EBAY $TICKY

2000-10-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

About five hundred years ago, a large ship set sail from a port in Vietnam, after loading in a cargo of precious blue-and-white ceramic ware that had been sent downriver from the towns of Chu Dao and My Xa-- towns which, at the time, since Ming China had closed its ports and imposed limits on its own ceramics industry, were home to some of the most important potteries in Southeast Asia. Scholars say the ship was probably Thai, one of many foreign ships that came calling for such cargo. Travelling southward along the coast, the ship sank, probably in a storm.

In 1993, the shipwreck was found by a fishing boat from the nearby town of Hoi An. Soon afterward, a massive marine archaeology expedition was mounted by the Vietnamese government, with the participation of Oxford University and salvage companies from both Vietnam and Malaysia. More than 150,000 porcelain vessels were salvaged-- a trove now known as the Hoi An Hoard. The most important pieces were given to the National History Museum in Hanoi, and 10% of the rest of the cargo was donated to 100 regional Vietnamese museums. The remaining lot went on the block a few days ago at Butterfields Auctioneers in San Francisco and you can bid on it-- welcome to the 21st century!-- via eBay.

A three-day live auction of the Hoi An Hoard ends today. Hours permitting, you can still bid live and in real time at www.ebay.com. Thereafter, items from the hoard will be auctioned online. Just check eBay's "Great Collections" section for details.

"The material is very compelling-- it speaks beyond its culture," says Dessa Goddard, Butterfields' Director of Asian Works of Art. "The craftsmanship is superb-- the drawing, the excitement and movement of the design are all exceptional. This has been an esoteric collecting field until now, but it is so readily accessible and delightful, and the price points are accessible."

(FYI, EBay bought Butterfields in 1999. And in case you didn't know how friendly archaeology, retail sales, and entertainment have gotten with each other, there was last month's hour-long show on the Learning Channel about the Hoi An Hoard, which did nothing to hurt the auction's prospects for success.)

Now, we couldn't be telling you this unless the Hoi An ceramics were incredibly beautiful, which they are, and unless there were a ton of other great stuff at eBay, too. We're big fans. A recent search there turned up 570 items under "hip hop" and "hip-hop"-- and we know you'd also be interested in the electronics, collectibles, old vinyl, sports memorabilia, and other funky material available at the site, too. (A Platform promotional t-shirt, limited edition, distributed last summer for free at a music event in Brooklyn, recently sold there for a whopping $21!) Funny how
it works: once you're poking around eBay for stuff you want, you start thinking about other stuff you like, and then it's hard to stop-- which accounts for the site's stratospherically high "stickiness quotient" (how long a viewer stays on the site) and those 15 million-and-counting registered users.

P4M BOOK REVIEW: DEVIANT DESIRES: INCREDIBLY STRANGE SEX, BY KATHARINE GATES (JUNO BOOKS)

2000-10-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

Even a lot of so-called "normal" sex is incredibly strange, if you're not the one who's having or wanting it, so it's no great surprise to discover a book called Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex. The surprise is that the book's approach is so ick-free. Genially but with perspicacity that would shame many supposedly more scientific researchers, author Katharine Gates has gathered descriptions, anecdotes, informal case studies and some damned amazing photos that focus on fetishes including some we bet you've never heard of: pony play, balloonism, giantess worship and/or fear, crush mania (as in guys who get off of sexy chicks crushing bugs and other stuff under their feet), obesity admiration, etc.

Gates doesn't exactly "explain" these fetishes; she knows that we've had too much of that approach, which is clouded by institutional condescension, for more than a century. What she does is allow the amazing people she's found to explain themselves: people like Barbara, who describes the sensation of putting on a pair of boots filled with custard; Galen, who tells why plush, stuffed animal toys are the ideal bedfellows; and Steve the balloon guy, who sheds light on the "to pop or not to pop" question." Wanna know what's hot about a Japanese schoolgirl run over by a car, lying bandaged and expectant on a hospital bed with her panties exposed? Parisian artist Robin Slocombe has that one covered, in her notorious paintings and photographs. Rounding out each chapter are handy sidebars with explanations like "What They Call Themselves" and "What They Do."

You may not already have heard of some of this stuff, but you'd be dull indeed if you weren't even slightly turned on by some of it, even if it is weird. And that's partly due the fact that Gates' fetishists are infectiously perky-- forget merely shameless!. (After reading 22 pages about balloon sex, you kinda wonder what it might be like to fuck, as Steve does, or get fucked by, as astronomy student and single mom Carrie does, a latex bag of air-- especially if, as Carrie says, "the sensation of the cool tight skin feels so wonderful" between her legs.) Moreover, you'd be dangerously incurious if you didn't click on the link at the end of this sentence, which connects to the newly expanded Deviant Desires website, at www.deviantdesires.com. That's where you'll find feedback forums, a FAQ, a schedule of Gate's upcoming public appearances, a fascinating "Ask Katharine" column-- and quite possibly a clue to that obscure sexual practice you may not even have tried yet but next year will be calling "the most rewarding part of my life."

GOING POSTAL AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE: A RANT

2000-09-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

It's official: the phrase "going postal" should not be used to mean "freaking out with rage and mowing down your co-workers with a shotgun." That's because, according the recent findings of a commission established by Postmaster General William J. Henderson, "postal workers are no more likely to physically assault, sexually harass or verbally abuse their co-workers than employees in the national work force."

Henderson established the commission in 1998, promising that relations with employees-- who have more than 100,000 grievances filed with the U.S. Postal Service-- was his "#1 priority." We thought that was kinda wack when we heard it, because we've spent way more of our valuable time on line at the post office than anyone should do, so we would have thought that Henderson's #1 priority would be relations with customers, who during the last 50 years of postal service meltdown have racked up a thousand times more grievances than bureaucratically ensconced employees have.

The commission said going postal is "a myth," that not all that many Postal Service employees have followed in the footsteps of the Edmond, Oklahoma letter carrier who killed fourteen of his co-workers and wounded six others in 1986. The commission surveyed 12,000 poster workers and 3,000 employees in other jobs around the country-- and spent nearly $4 million doing so! We believe the commission is right, but only because it takes some wit and energy to kill somebody, let alone a lot of people, and our commission, which met yesterday and only cost $47 (for beer), determined that postal workers were the dimmest and laziest creatures on the planet, invertebrates included. So that "going postal" should mean "devolving from human form into useless organic material."

P4M ART REVIEW: DAMIEN HIRST: "THEORIES, MODELS, METHODS, APPROACHES, ASSUMPTIONS, RESULTS, AND FINDINGS"-- GAGOSIAN GALLERY, NEW YORK

2000-09-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Why do people insist on calling Damien Hirst a "bad boy" of art? Because he split a pig down the middle and exhibited the separated halves suspended in glass tanks of formaldehyde that you could walk between? People who aren't looking closely at Hirst's "sensational" work think he's concerned with death, but life and the way we use it-- the way we study, conceptualize, and commercialize it-- are his true subjects. That makes Hirst, in our book, as good a boy as there is.

Hirst's current show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York presents the fullest and most entertaining example yet of the artist's dissective yet life-affirming showmanship. Entitled "Theories, Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results, and Findings," the exhibition takes the form of a five-room, walk-through, mini amusement park whose theme appears to be anatomy. Among the displays: a glass cabinet of mammal skeletons; a human skeleton on a glass cross with bobbing ping-pong ball eyes; two not quite fastidiously-kept autopsy tables (complete with cheese sandwich and covered cadavers that gallery notes say are fake); another glass cabinet neatly displaying 8,000 hand-crafted, jewel-like, actual-size pills; a giant beach ball kept aloft by a column of air over a field of knife blades (a guard stands close by); still another glass cabinet with garbage bags of "body parts" and air fresheners; a commanding 20-foot-high painted bronze anatomical figure; and a couple of large glass tanks containing, in addition to water and fish, the mute remains of some potentially devastating or potentially harmless medical procedure: an examination chair, a table of surgical instruments, etc.

The show is both amusing and horrifying, dopey and majestic-- kinda the way life seems when you're not conceiving of it in sit-com cliches and feel-good movie formulas. Hirst seems to be drawing attention to the growing virulance of these cliches and formulas-- in fact, to the radical contingency (the fragility!) of both life and our ways of thinking about it. Ironically, this is best summed up by the show's least sensationalistic installation: two large, apparently identical glass cubes with ping-pong balls blowing around inside them. In one box, the balls are flurrying in a much more satisfying frenzy-- and this is the box whose floor slopes downward at a slightly greater angle toward the central air blower, making it easier for more of the balls to roll inward and get caught up in the updraft. The point seems to be that one tiny factor, easy to overlook, can make the difference between an idea that just barely works-- like "the sanctity of life"-- and one that doesn't.

The Opinionator on... The New Camel Ad Campaign

2000-09-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

Cigarettes are evil, but some of us love 'em anyway. What we hate are wack-ass ad campaigns that try needlessly to cute-ify or sex-ify the image of smoking, or campaigns that try to position cigarette advertising as a noble expression of freedom of speech-- when clearly, after decades of lies by cigarette manufacturers, it's an embarrassingly venal form of freedom of speech. So how lame is the new Camel campaign, that according to Fran Creighton, vice-president of marketing at R.J. Reynolds, as quoted in Advertising Age, is "a spoof of advertising itself, as well as social cliches, scandals, and myths." Dream on, Fran. Debuting this week, the new ads incorporate supposedly tongue-in-cheek viewer discretion notes, a la "Pop-Up Video", warning against "subliminal imagery," "pop mythology," and other dangers. RJR's strained irreverence is irrelevant, as far as we're concerned. It's clear we're gonna keep sucking in product no matter what, so it's kinda stupid of them to spend all that ad money and not really fool or charm anybody.

The Opinionator on... Sex and Boys

2000-09-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

BOYS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN-- THOUGH THEY DON'T NECESSARILY WANNA TALK ABOUT IT

Ask teenage guys about their sexual behavior and they'll tell you one thing on a paper questionnaire. To a computer, though, they'll tell... more. In a recent study by Washington's Research Triangle Institute, 1600 guys between the ages of 15 and 19 were asked a bunch of questions about sex-- sex and drug use, sex and alcohol, and sex with another guy. Some filled out a paper questionnaire, while others responded by way of a computer and headphones. According to the New York Times, the computer group "were almost four times as likely as the pen-and-paper group to report some type of male-male sex (5.5% vs. 1.5%), 14 times as likely to report sex with an intravenous drug user (2.8% vs. 0.2%), and 5.5 times as likely to report that they were 'always' or 'often' drunk or high when they had heterosexual sex (10.8% vs. 2.2%)." Nice guys were the worst. The largest gap between computer reponses and paper-and-pencil responses occurred among top-student types, who may feel that they would have the most to lose if they came clean. Forget face-to-face sex questions. Researchers have known for a long time that actually sitting opposite a teenage guy can produce some major dishonesty. If you really want a sense of what guys are up to, just check out the chat rooms. The truth is out there, in some form-- a fact well known to America Online, which gets 55 cents of every dollar it earns through chat.

The Opinionator on... Quaker Oats Dinosaur Eggs

2000-09-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Is the idea of reptile eggs hatching in your breakfast bowl completely repellent? Of course it is, but that's only half the reason we're so eager to hook up with a box of Quaker Oats' new hot cereal, Dinosaur Eggs. All you do is add boiling water to a bowl of this stuff-- regular oatmeal infested with several nut-sized eggs-- and voila! Tiny monster spawn. Since it's obviously aimed at kids, we know that Dinosaur Eggs is going to be incredibly sweet, and we love that. But we can't wait to evaluate all the special effects that Quaker's cereal technologists have spent time and money developing: Exactly what crawls, erupts, or leaks out of the eggs? Is the baby dinosaur matter a different color from the eggs and the oatmeal medium? How sauromorphic is this matter? Is there some kind of hatching sound? Are the egg shells hard? How long do they stay hard? If you pop the eggs in your mouth before they've had a chance to soften properly, do they hatch there? Wouldn't it be great if the babies were, like, grey slimy gel candies that kinda died and started to decay if you didn't eat them right away? Kudos to Quaker for proving again that breakfast is truly the most important meal of the day.

The Opinionator on... Khalid Abdul Muhammad

2000-09-02T08:39:00.001-07:00

Khalid Abdul Muhammad-- the man who wants to lead a million youths in New York on September 5-- needs our help. Why? Because Muhammad believes that "there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate, to prove that six million so-called Jews lost their lives in Nazi Germany." This is wrong. Muhammad has referred to Jews as " bloodsuckers," and has warned a university audience against the "hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, perpetrating-a-fraud so-called Jew who just crawled out of the ghettoes of Europe just a few days ago..." This is hateful. Muhammad has reminded Jews that "somebody must look you in your cold lying blue eyes and pull the cover off of you today. I don't give a damn about you and I will give you hell from the cradle to the grave." This sounds self-important. Staggering historical crimes do require redress, but the best tools for revolution are true knowledge, genuine love, and selflessness. Anyone who's been blessed with any of these needs to take some responsibility and help correct our brother, and soon. For though it would be lamentable if Muhammad never understood history better, and sad if his alliance with Allah's Good never became stronger, it would be a real tragedy if a great opportunity to lead a new generation were squandered through demigoguery.

EASY NEWS VS. "HARD" NEWS-- LYNDA LOPEZ INTERVIEWS JENNIFER!

2000-08-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

We love Lynda Lopez! As the WB11 "Morning News" show's entertainment reporter, she's bringing just the right amount bounce to New York breakfast television, without saddling her segments with a lot of, you know, ideas. Yesterday she interviewed her sister Jennifer. Lynda asked what was, like, the worst part about being famous and what was the best part. Jennifer said that the worst part was "getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning for interviews like this one!" and the best part was buying clothes-- "you know how much I like clothes!"

Both girls laughed, and the screen blazed with cheer. Which is exactly what we want from a morning news show-- and why, moreover, we're not overly concerned that network news divisions are ceding all the really "hard" news to cable and dishing up more and more of the easy stuff. We think the recent efflorescence of "entertainment news," both network and cable, is the greatest thing in journalism since the 18th century Parisian salon of Madame Doublet, who sent a servant around every morning to the rich and powerful households, to ask what was new. In the afternoon, Madame Doublet and her well-connected guests would vet, amplify, and distribute the stories-- a system that evolved into one of the first important printed news networks. Now, you know that new clothes for royal mistresses were as legitimate a part of Madame Doublet's news as foreign wars and social unrest.

SMOKERS DELIGHT: BIG TOBACCO COMPANIES CAN'T STOP LYING!

2000-08-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Don't get us wrong: we love smoking. We just hate the sanctimonious bastards who make cigarettes. They're always lying, equivocating, and "positioning" themselves, instead of just saying, "Look, we make cigarettes; you love cigarettes; you know cigarettes are bad for you; sure, you'll stop smoking some day"-- boom, end-of-story.

Just in case you believe that big tobacco companies, after lying to us for decades, are now our friends because they're telling us, in TV and prints ads, that they want to nurture a "dialog about tobacco use" and promote "adult choice": The reality is that they need to keep selling billions of units per year, at least for another couple of years, before they can diversify further into more food- and entertainment-based companies-- which is why they are looking abroad and salivating over needy governments with less stringent food-and-drug rules than in the U.S. and less sophisticated citizen-consumers.

According to the New York Times, the World Health Organization has just released a report detailing an "ambitious, often covert effort... to curb global anti-smoking initiatives, dating back to the 1980s." Drawing on documents that have emerged in recent successful lawsuits against big tobacco companies, the report accuses the companies of "creating bogus front groups, misrepresenting research, pitting other international organizations against the W.H.O., and lobbying to cut the organization's funding."

Yup, in the U.S., now that the law is on their tail for actively promoting disease and addiction all these years, big tobacco companies are positioning themselves as responsible members of society, while at the same time, outside the U.S., they're selling the same old shit, in the same old way. And actually, it's not even the same shit these guys are selling abroad. In the U.S., even with federal restrictions, cigarettes contain, like, 150 ingredients* other than tobacco**. In much of the rest of the world, they contain even more really delicious, addictive stuff!

_____

* Acetanisole; acetic acid; acetophenone 2- acetylthiazole; ammonium hydroxide; anisyl formate; benzaldehyde; benzoin, resinoid; benzyl alcohol; bergamot oil; bois de rose oil; borneol; bornyl acetate; bornyl isovalerate; butyric acid; caramel color; cardamom seed oil; carob bean and extract; beta-caryophyllene; castoreum extract; celery seed oil; cellulose; chamomile flower, roman extract and oil; cinnamaldehyde; cinnamyl alcohol; cinnamyl cinnamate; citral; citric acid; citronella oil; d,l-citronellol; civet absolute; clary oil; cocoa & cocoa products; coffee extract; cognac, green, oil; coriander oil; davana oil; delta-decalactone; gamma-decalactone; decanoic acid; diacetyl; diammonium phosphate; 2,3-diethylpyrazine; dill oil; 6,10-dimethyl-5,9-undecadien-2-one; 2,5-dimethylpyrazine; dimethyltetrahydro-benzofuranone; ethyl 2-methylbutyrate; ethyl acetate; ethyl butyrate; ethyl hexanoate; ethyl isovalerate; ethyl lactate; ethyl maltol; ethyl octanoate; ethyl phenylacetate; ethyl propionate; ethyl vanillin; 2-ethyl-3,(5 or 6)-dimethylpyrazine; 5-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4-methyl-2(5h)-furanone; 2-ethyl-3-methylpyrazine; fenugreek extract; geraniol; geranium rose oil; geranyl acetate; glycerol; guar gum; 2,4-heptadienal; gamma-heptalactone; 2-heptanone; hexanoic acid; 3-hexen-1-ol; hexen-2-al; hexyl acetate; hexyl phenylacetate; 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2h)-furanone; 4-(para-hydroxyphenyl)-2-butanone; immortelle extract; alpha-ionone; beta-ionone; isoamyl acetate; isoamyl butyrate; isoamyl formate; isoamyl hexanoate; isoamyl isovalerate; isoamyl phenylacetate; isobutyraldehyde; isobutyric acid; isovaleric acid; kola nut extract; lauric acid; licorice extract; lime oil; linalool; lovage extract; maltol; mate absolute; l-menthol; para-methoxybenzaldehyde; methyl isovalerate; methyl linoleate (48%), methyl linolenate (52%); 5-methyl-2-phenyl-2-hexenal; 6-methyl-3,5-heptadien-2-one; 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one; 4-methylacetophenone; 3-methylbutyraldehyde; 2-methylbutyric acid, methylcyclopentenolone, mimosa absolute; mountain maple extract solid; gamma-nonalactone; oakmoss absolute; gamma-octalactone; octanoic acid; opoponax oil; orange oil, sweet; orris root extract; pectin; omega-pentadecalactone; peppermint oil; phenethyl alcohol; phenethyl phenylacetate; phenylacetaldehyde; phenylacetic acid; piperonal; potassium sorbate; propenylguaethol; propyl para-hydroxybenzoate; propylene glycol; pyruvic acid; rhodinol; rose oil, bulgarian, true otto; rum; sage oleoresin; sandalwood oil, yellow; sclareolide; spearmint oil; styrax extract; sugar: corn syrup; sugar: invert sugar; sugar: sucrose; tangerine oil; alpha-terpineol; 2,3,5,6-tetramethylpyrazine; tolualdehydes (mixed o,m,p); para-tolyl acetate; para-tolyl isobutyrate; 4-(2,6,6-trimethylcyclohex-1-enyl) but-2-en-4-one; 4-(2,6,6-trimethylcyclohexa-1,3-dienyl) but-2-en-4-one; 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine; gamma-undecalactone; valeraldehyde; valerian root extract; vanilla extract; vanillin; veratraldehyde; carbon dioxide; ethyl alcohol; water.

** And that's not including the paper, the glue, and the ink for the cute little trademark.

P4M NON-REVIEW: SPINNING INTO BUTTER PLAYS TO AN AGED, UNICULTURAL AUDIENCE AT LINCOLN CENTER

2000-07-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

By now, you've probably heard of this play, Spinning Into Butter, in which four, white administrators of a conservative Vermont college display, comically but touchingly, their varying brands of racism-speaking-with-the-voice-of-not- deeply-enough-examined liberalism. A Nuyorican guy gets promised a scholarship if he lists himself as "Hispanic" on the application form; a black guy gets some hate shit posted on his dorm door; and the drama takes off from there.

A hit in Chicago, where it premiered last year, Spinning Into Butter has been in previews at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater and opens officially there tonight. It's tightly acted by a great cast and deftly marries a righteous political agenda with the emotional requirements of good theater. In fact, Spinning Into Butter is just the sort of moving issue-play that the Pulitzer committee loves. But as we pulled our attention away from the action onstage for a moment during the second act and surveyed the distinctly aged and largely uni-cultural audience (all of whom were sitting in $50 seats), we couldn't help noticing the same problem we addressed last week in our "anti-review" of Bill T. Jones's recent Lincoln Center appearance: the structural smugness of big arts institutions.

Yup. They didn't give us review tickets for this one, either-- because all of Lincoln Center's marketing and publicity efforts evidently go toward selling out the house to people who can afford it, and very little go toward expanding the critical context for the artist's work and widening the audience for it. We doubt that too many other urban media outlets got comps, either. (We did see some friends at the performance who review theater for mainstream publications and we'll try to get a review for you from one of them, since, again, the play was terrific and you should definitely try to see it.) It's great that Lincoln Center's target audience gets to see a play depicting many of its favorite forms of racism, but are Lincoln Center Theater co-directors Andre Bishop and Bernard Gersten absolutely precluding the possibility of a race-driven drama that speaks to, and is marketed to, everyone?

HALLMARK CRAPS OUT WITH AD BUY IN SPIN

2000-07-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

For a minute there, we were afraid that Hallmark had created a doomed line of cards. The July, 2000, Spin contains a two-page ad for Hallmark's new Fresh Ink cards, which, according to the ad copy, let you "say something real." The ad depicts a soggy card on the bottom of a freshly-drained bathtub, along with a well-used bar of deodorant soap and a few of those asterisk-shaped anti-slip stickies. The card depicts a yellow rubber ducky and reads, Hope life is soon ducky... 'cause right now it's sucky.

Wondering if there were any market research on the subset of consumers who use both the word "sucky" and the word "ducky," we called Hallmark and spoke to very nice spokesperson named Lana. She told us that Fresh Ink is Hallmark's newest line of "alternative cards," aimed at 18-to-39-year-old women (though "men may like them, too"). Lana said there were 480 different cards in the line (!) and that they all use "the same language women use with their best friends every day."

Mystery solved. The only thing Hallmark did wrong was spend a lot of money advertising in Spin, which probably has very few readers who use the word "ducky" and also use cards to express empathy with depressed or luckless friends. Hallmark is gonna make a mint on Fresh Ink, as long as its advertising can reach the millions of lunch-hour-shopping secretaries who think that buying a card reading I opened the box, and inside was this tiny, delicate porcelain figurine that looked like me as a child... [Inside] I hate getting crap like that. Have a crap-free birthday will make them real.

EXCLUSIVE: ON BOARD THE U.S.S. JOHN F. KENNEDY WITH THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

2000-07-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

We've used this space to take several pokes at the U.S. military-industrial establishment. Last year we even took Spike Lee to task for creating TV spots for the U.S. Navy. That's why we feel compelled, in the spirit of full disclosure, to report that we spent the 4th of July in the belly of the beast (well, on the flight deck of the beast): aboard the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, in New York Harbor, attending a dinner hosted by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and watching fireworks.

We were among 300 guests. The ship had hosted 3000 earlier in the day, when President Clinton was aboard for the International Naval Review, but all of those people had been ferried off by the time we arrived for dinner, except the President, who'd been helicoptered off. It was an honor to be invited-- and we felt it important to go, because we didn't think there would be too many other representatives of the urban media there (and there weren't, although we did see and chat with the likes of Deepak Chopra, John Glenn, Dr. Ruth, Gary Hart, F. Lee Bailey, and Charles Rangel). We did feel a bit morally conflicted, as some of the other guests might have felt, especially when we were treated to a slightly scary, after-dinner performance of the Navy's silent drill team-- ten dudes spinning bayonet-tipped rifles with balletic precision. But we wanted to be there, finally, because we thought it would be interesting to see what it was like spending a few hours in the absolutely safest place on earth.

And it was interesting. Safe felt... fun, while we were there, anchored midway between the Statue of Liberty and Governor's Island, on an aircraft carrier that's a fifth of a mile long, with a crew of 5200. Helicopters patrolling overhead. Guarding on all sides (and somewhat below us, since the Kennedy is as tall as a 20-story building), other U.S.
warships, Coast Guard and NYPD vessels, teams of mysterious, all-black amphibious-looking things, and about 50,000 other craft, some belonging to the media. On deck, parked, a helicopter, a jet-- and a buffet, a bar, and a dance band. Privileged conversations unshielded from eavesdropping. Secret Service on the periphery, along with other security types (door staff at clubs take note: security for the Secretary of Defense is tight but genial). We were a little disappointed, by the way, when our Pentagon security clearance came through without a hitch, the day before. Clearly, our anti-establishment op-ed pieces haven't been transgressive enough.

The fireworks were OK. No radio on deck made us feel a little distant. The amazing parts of the day were: travelling by launch from Pier 78 to the Kennedy, down the Hudson, facing the massive, up-river parade of boats; arriving at the Kennedy and stepping into the cavernous hangar deck (like Captain Kirk coming on board the refurbished Enterprise in Star Trek II, or was it Star Trek IV); the orzo salad with scallops; the intense dedication we saw in each man and woman in uniform, whether wielding a weapon, a walky-talky, or a serving spoon.

In the street afterwards, when we were walking to the subway, after being ferried back to Pier 78 (bar still open all the way, thank you), we came across a guy playing solo electric guitar. To the delight of exhausted sidewalk-partiers, this guy was doing the famous Hendrix fucked-up "Star Spangled Banner," a work of pure genius that, to our ears, seemed to be asking ask how long America would need to continue seeing itself as an exclusive dinner party floating in a sea of protective hardware. We tried to focus on this as we hopped onto the A train-- but damn if we couldn't get the insane fun of military privilege out of our mind....

"NEO-GRAFFITI 2000" AT AGNES B: HAZE, FUTURA 2000, AND MORE....

2000-06-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

Used to be, you could arrive at an art opening "fashionably late" and still get the fuck inside. Nowadays though, as with hot club parties, you either go early or face the prospect of herding outside (where, unless you're smart, you stand around for forty minutes, pretending to decide which of all the night's better party alternatives to pursue, until you skulk away invisibly, secretly thinking you should have dressed better). Getting into places late is hardly even a matter of coolness anymore. Now that everybody's sorta cool and nobody's that cool, party planners just invite way more people than can possibly fit in their venues, then close the door when the party comes to that inevitable crush-point.

So we were glad we arrived ridiculously early-- 7:15, when the invitation said 7 to 9-- for Thursday evening's totally fun opening of the "Neo-Graffiti Project 2000" show at the Agnes B men's store in New York's Soho. It was already crowded, but with minimal fuss we were able to get inside, grab a mini-bottle of champagne, and begin checking out the work on display. The show is small but packed with power, amply demonstrating how, over the last few decades, the street-level vision of graffiti greats Doze, Futura 2000, Haze, Lee, and Phase 2 has mightily influenced not just mainstream art but global culture.

Who came? It looked like everyone. When we left, around 8 (to rush to another party), it was obviously crush-point. Seen inside-- chatting over the inspired, early-evening audio catalysis of Major Force's DJ Takagi Kan-- and outside, which become a scene in itself (because it was a beautiful summer evening), were Giant Step's Jonathan Bernstein, 360hiphop.com's Jon Caramanica, PR wiz Roy Dank, Tokyo Street 2000's Suzi Funahara, Indie 5000's Matt Goias, Platform.net's Tina Imm and Steve Greco, 360hiphop.com's Jazzbo, creative-marketing genius Steve Klein, creative-marketing genius (and art collector) Mike Neumann, artist and art director Ro Starr, and tons of other people on the same tip.

"Neo Graffiti Project 2000" runs through July 14. So if you're in or around New York, you gotta hustle over to the Agnes B store, at 79 Greene Street. And when you're there, look for the special edition stickers that each
artist has created for Tokion, the magazine that's presenting the show along with Agnes B. The sale of these stickers benefits the Tokion Tree Fund, a newly established charity whose goal is to beautify the Los Angeles neighborhood of Union and Alvarado. According to the nice people at Tokion, "the fund was created in the hopes of helping regenerate the area. The project will receive assistance in the care and upkeep of the trees from the local Esperanza Elementary School‚s fifth grade class as part of their science curriculum."

IS GIRL-WATCHING THE HARDEST JOB IN NEW YORK THIS SUMMER?

2000-06-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

The biggest job in New York during the summer? Checking out the women! You're walking down a crowded street, or entering a busy store, or climbing out of a packed subway station, and flooding toward you will be hundreds of women, each of whom expects to be checked out.

You guys definitely need to give a special moment or two of attention to each lady. 'Cause she's worked hard to find just the right little stretchy top, the right little clingy skirt, the right little strappy sandals. And you gay guys need to check out the chicks, too-- only instead of fretting like the straight boys about how far you can go in expressing your lust for all the delicious-looking babe-flesh walking around, you're probably more gonna be admiring the thought that went into each woman's choice of proportion, cut, and accessories; which is cool, since women dig that respect. And let's face it, you other women definitely need to be in a steady state of checking girls out, too, so you can stay on top of any micro-developments of summer style and, unless you're some kind of well-adjusted superperson, keep your self-image in line with the competition.

And don't worry if your attention to one hottie happens to distract you from the next one on the event horizon. Hottie #2 does expect your lingering glance when she's maybe five or six feet away (though she'll pretend she doesn't!), but if you happen to be occupied she'll immediately give you another chance-- when, say, her beautifully naked arm floats up to give a casual-though-sexy flip to a few strands of her beautifully cut hair, gently raising, in the process, a beautifully formed breast that is barely covered by a beautifully sheer fabric.

It's work to be there for all these women-- and your brain might register 632 of them on your way to a club, on a Saturday night. But what work could be nicer? Once you're in the club, of course, forget about it. You might as well be in a salt mine!

ANNALS OF CATERED HOSPITALITY: TO TIP OR NOT TO TIP?

2000-06-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

We saw something interesting last night, at a store-launch party in Soho, thrown by a style magazine: A cater-waitress had a dollar in a plastic cup, in the middle of the tray of free cocktails she was passing around to guests. Now, we've seen tip cups at hosted bars before, where a guest is happy to know that a flash of green might connect him faster with his free cocktail, but a tip cup on a passing tray was new to us. We're standing around at a party, doing what we were invited to do-- look great and lighten trays of refreshments-- and we're also being asked to dig into our pockets?

Normally, our hearts are with the workers, but this chick struck us as laboring under a deal-breaking misunderstanding about what parties like this are all about. Hosted events are supposed to preclude the idea of money, aren't they? Doesn't the host himself-- in this case, a very nice magazine editor who probably didn't realize what his hired help was doing-- invite us to share in a warm feeling of being taken care of, so we can feel free to celebrate whatever we're supposed to be celebrating?

But we try not to get an attitude about shit like this. We know that manners are constantly evolving-- and, since we go to a lot of parties, that everything is more comprehensible after another drink. So we had another coupla drinks and tried, when that waitress passed again, to get down with whatever fun/sleazy/ballsy vibe she was working from. In our pleasant, sake-fueled, party haze we tried thinking, "Yeah, baby, work that fucking tip cup"-- but our attempt fell apart when we noticed that there was still only one, miserable dollar in the cup, which indicated how little our fellow party guests were feeling this act.

On the way out, we saw our host and told him what a fabulous time we'd had. But as we jumped into a cab, on our way to the next party (for the new issue of an "extreme fetish" magazine), we couldn't get the waitress's pathetically defiant look out of our minds.

STUDIES SHOW: JACK VALENTI CAUSES MOVIE CENSORSHIP

2000-06-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

Flick freaks are chuckling over Scary Movie's "R" rating, given its raunchiness. As delicately described in Variety, the movie features a man getting "stabbed through the head with an erect penis," a female gym teacher sporting "suspiciously male nether regions," a guy spewing "an Exorcist-like stream of his, uh, essence," and a chick with "an Amazon-like thicket of... public hair." If the movie had been grimmer or artsier, the same elements could have drawn the dreaded "NC-17" rating, which means no one under 17 admitted, period (which means smaller profits). "R" means restricted, as in people under 17 need a parent or adult guardian to accompany them.

It's not so much that double standards piss us off, or that we're surprised by the underlying assumption here, which seems to be that thinking about sex and violence is more dangerous than laughing about them. It's more that we're curious about why, in the U.S., we're stuck with a movie rating fetish in the first place. The answer goes back to the notorious, so-called Hays office, which in the '20s and '30s, enforced the industry's voluntary (that is, not legally binding) "production code." The code had been formulated in response to supposed public indignance over Hollywood sex scandals of the time. Thereafter, according to one source, "such words as 'damn,' 'hell,' 'nuts,' even 'nerts' were forbidden, as was explicit violence, alternative social behavior, unpunished criminal activity, and even the depiction of men and women in bed together."

Pretty unprogressive, right? Well, most of the Hollywood elite were immigrants and thus on their best behavior-- the appearance of which, of course, didn't hurt business. Code tyranny stayed strong until the '60s, when, as you know, all fuck broke loose. Enter Jack Valenti-- war hero, Harvard grad, successful businessman, presidential advisor (Kennedy and Johnson), and now head of the Motion Picture Association of America-- who officially abolished the Hays office but nonetheless continued to stoke the sanctimony throughout the last thirty years, as he presided over the evolution of the ratings system.

In the beginning, it was "G" for general audiences, "M" for mature audiences, "R" for audiences restricted to those under 16 or 17 (depending on where you were), and "X" for the hot stuff. In time, "M" became "GP," which became "PG" (parental guidance suggested), which split into "PG" and "PG-13" (the latter connoting, according to the MPAA, "a higher level of intensity"). "X" (which came to sound unacceptably scurrilous, once dirty art films found their stride) became "NC-17." Naturally, all these changes were accompanied by a conspicuous public discourse whose drivers (Valenti and the studios) were always more interested in selling tickets than moving forward a conversation about national morals-- a fact we think you should keep in mind during the summer movie season, when you're lining up for the privilege of immersing yourself for two hours in other people's thoughts.

EMERGENCY MEMO TO JANET RENO: DON'T RAID VIEQUES!

2000-05-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

MEMO: 05-01-00

TO: Attorney General Janet Reno
FROM: Lucia Toledo, Associate Producer

RE: The Pentagon's planned sea-and-land raid on Vieques, the island off Puerto Rico with a U.S. Navy bombing range that has been occupied recently by dozens of protestors

Janet, can I give you some advice? Don't. It's risky. People could get hurt. Moreover, you might hurt yourself-- you might bomb, theatrically speaking. Sure, you've got a law to enforce. I know that President Clinton made a deal in January with Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Rosello that allows the Navy to continue military exercises on Vieques, in exchange for an American promise to abide by a Puerto Rican referendum on the future of the range. But most raids make bad theater, and the raids you've staged definitely need better scripts.

This time, the plot is especially weak. Training the Atlantic fleet is not exactly a flashpoint for American audiences. People will side with the protestors-- many of whom, pictured on Friday in the New York Times, are Adorable Old People, which, in entertainment terms, you don't wanna mess with. The back story has problems: The United States' colonialist history with Puerto Rico and, frankly, your own history with the raiding process. (That image of Elian with an automatic weapon in his face doesn't help.)

The actors? Well, Janet, you're fine. A little wooden, but people like to see how nobly you manage that disability (I'm talking about your fashion sense!). Freeh, he's cute but scary, which is great-- like somebody who might freak after a round of dirty sex. Defense Secretary Cohen-- just goofy enough. But you've got to rethink the rest of the cast. You've got to humanize your boys and girls, the ones who actually do the raiding. And I'm not just suggesting that you allow them to unbutton or remove their shirts, or be shot close-up, sweaty, and in slow-motion (though you might take a lesson or two from "Baywatch" on how to make law enforcement watchable). It's more that we need to see your kids' pain and conflicts. Do they like raiding? Do they believe in it? What does it mean to follow orders? It's the Nazi war criminal thing. Plus, do they work out after a full day of raiding, and if so, what do they wear?

Look, I don't want to be too superficial about this, but the gravely legal approach you've been using way undervalues critical issues like the right of the Puerto Rican people to determine how their land is used. And those are precisely the issues that a supposedly superficial, entertainment-oriented approach can point up-- and has pointed up ever since those ancient military operations that Homer wrote about.

Waco or Entebbe, Janet. That's all I'm asking.

Best,
L.

FAIL SAFE LIVE: A MUST-MISS?

2000-04-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

The "X" may largely have largely leaked out of "The X-Files," but the energy that's still there is in Gillian Anderson's Scully-- the skeptic clobbered by faith, the bureaucrat in search of autonomy, the girl with the great haircut and perfectly proportioned coat-dress. This Sunday night's episode of "The X-Files" was both written and directed by Anderson-- and we're planning our whole weekend around it. Compared to which, that over-hyped, live broadcast of George Clooney's black-and-white remake of '60s-brinkmanship thriller Fail Safe seems a little tepid, frankly. Can even the heft of a cast including Harvey Keitel and Brian Dennehy summon up the insanely stomach-knotting, nuclear paranoia of the Cold War's height? The whole premise of two, opposing superpowers seems dated and juvenile.

JUST SAY NO, LIKE BET DID TO THE WHITE HOUSE

2000-04-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

What happened when the White House Office of Drug Control Policy offered BET $800,000 to run a year's worth of anti-drug advertising on its cable network? BET just said no. According to Advertising Age, "BET refuse to participate in the anti-drug program unless the buy for its TV network and associated magazine properties was raised... to $5 million." For the previous year, the White House's media buy at BET had been $750,000-- but BET executive Louis Carr claims that sums in this range were not "sufficient enough commitment to the network and to community that we serve." He also noted that the White House was spending more with Latino media outlets.

The $800,000 will now go to Black Pearl Entertainment (a joint venture with WB Network and Time Warner) and the African Heritage Network, where it will fund half a year's ads on each.

BAROQUE "COMEDIE-BALLET" NOT A TOTAL BORE!

2000-04-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

Say you thought Rameau's 18th-century comedie-ballet Platee was a boring, elitist relic, powerless to make modern audiences laugh sagely at the petty meddling of jaded gods in earthly life. Well, we'd recommend you go over the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center and see madman/genius choreographer Mark Morris's production of this Baroque theater work, in which Zeus pretends to be in love with a vain frog queen. Set in a terrarium, this production of Platee is certainly no more boring and elitist than the most recent VH1 Vogue Fashion Awards show was-- and, with costumes by Isaac Mizrahi, the show is tons more stylish.

Platee is being presented only four more times during NYCO's spring season: April 14, 18, 20, and 22. For tickets, call 212-307-4100-- and say that Platform sent ya (like that'll mean anything to the zombies who staff those phones).

APPOINTMENT TELEVISION: QVC HUCKSTRESS LEVINE GETS HER OWN TALK SHOW

2000-03-31T09:28:00.000-08:00

Guess who's getting her own TV talk show? QVC huckstress extraordinaire, Kathy Levine: insanely watchable, inanely loveable, almost Buddha-like in the happiness she radiates.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the nice folks at Studios USA Domestic Television are developing a daytime talk vehicle for Levine, who's sold more cubic zirconia (Diamonique!) than anyone else on the planet. One of QVC's original hosts, on board since the shopping network launched in 1986, Levine has logged more than 12,000 hours of live airtime-- which we think that entitles her to her own country, though a talk show is nice. The show, which will be syndicated, is expected to debut in the fall of 2001.

We've never actually purchased any of the jewelry, cookware, apparel, makeup, or other items that Levine demonstrates (fondling them, as appropriate, with those perfectly manicured fingers). But for us, Levine does nothing less than define great television-- improbably, of course. She happens to be QVC's star seller, having generated more that $150 million in annual sales, but the real story is bigger than that. Levine has a warmth and authenticity that leaps off the screen-- and rural, bedridden grandmothers with credit cards aren't the only ones susceptible to it, either. We've heard plenty of street thugs praise that certain kittenish quality Levine has, which seems to combine strength and vulnerability. Everybody understands strength and vulnerability. Finally: a talk show that's gonna show what's in back of all that-- a bit more of the Kathy Levine story.

EMERGENGY MESSAGE TO SELA WARD: PLEASE STOP DANCING FOR SPRINT!

2000-03-29T09:28:00.000-08:00

Sela, what were you thinking? Were you desperate for money? Did they offer you infinite minutes?

That Sprint commercial that has you dancing around, all loose and cha-cha, is totally wrong. It's wrong for Sprint, if they're trying to reach young consumers, because a mature woman feeling all free and kicky has nothing to do with our phone service (let alone with Sprint's advanced "code division multiple access" technology, or the company's century of progress since it was founded, as the Brown Telephone Company, in 1899, in Abilene, Kansas). And that commercial is wrong for you, too, Sela.

Think. Could any dancing on your part have summoned the majesty of globe-spanning, 21st-century telecommunications? Was this gig supposed to be a strategic stepping stone to your big role in Julie Taymor's next Shakespearean tragedy? Baby, you should have passed on this during the first phone call. We recommend that you fire your agent immediately, then call Sprint CEO Andrew Sukawaty and chief marketing officer Charles Levine and beg them to yank the spot. (You were on "Sisters"; you can get through to anybody!) Then find a new agent and ask her to get you another gig like that Jessica Savitch thing. You were completely watchable in that!

What's Up With... People Being All Up In Your Face?

2000-03-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

On the street or in a store, do you feel that people are more in your face nowadays, than ever before? When you're trying to walk or drive somewhere, do you find yourself wanting all those folks to fucking just get out of the way? Of course you do. We all do-- for a number of reasons.

Start with a hypothetically well-adjusted, well-brought-up human being, living in a hypothetical community where people have a civilized amount of space to move around in-- whatever that means to you: no traffic jams, no mob at the open bar. Then consider all the factors that, in recent years, have diminished the navigability of public spaces, from a theoretical ideal of 100%:

- Overpopulation: There are many more of us now than when manners were invented. Nobody says "Excuse me," or even knows when to say it. Take off 5%, leaving navigability permanently diminished at 95%. Not great, but acceptable.

- Ungenerosity: Overpopulation means scarcity of resources, of which space is prime. Scarcity institutionalizes have-and have-not thinking-- which, in the case of space, has resulted in all kinds of stand-your-ground posturing. Sad, but it seems kinda normal now to ignore people standing right next to you at the door of a club. Subtract another 5%, leaving the human race at 90%.

- Narcissism: The increase here-- at least in people educated in the U.S. during the last thirty years-- is probably a result of excessive coddling by elementary and secondary school teachers, and college professors, which has allowed individuals to imagine that they are the sole standard by which proper behavior is measured. Like at the movies: "I'm sitting in this seat and I don't particularly care where you sit, as long it's not here, or in front of me, or anywhere else that might affect my enjoyment. And it's OK for me to be this way, because that's the way I am." Definitely minus 10%, for a remainder of 80%. Getting down there, but this factor is not a deal-breaker-- especially since, in a culture where human beings are so readily measured as units of consumption and production, narcissism can help put people back in touch with themselves as units of joy and pleasure.

- Motor Control Deficit: People's legs and arms and shoulders and hips and ankles no longer work with the athletic coordination to which our species was heir. You know that this is a result of hormones, plutonium, high-voltage electrical fields, fluoride, and other shit that big corporations have been pouring into the environment since WWII. Suck away 5%, to leave 75%.

- Personal Sound Systems: It's nice to hear music on headphones, but these devices have devastated peripheral awareness, making already narcissistic and ungenerous people dangerous projectiles or inertial roadblocks. Another 5% gone, leaving us with 70%.

- Cell Phones: See Personal Sound Systems, above. Cell phone users don't know what planet they're on. Lose another 5% like that. This is getting scary. 65%!

- Free-Floating Resentment Bordering on Rage: This is what happens when the world presents too many heinous political and social conditions for you to analyze and act against appropriately. Rational thought gets overtaken by a deep, primal fear of unseen or unknown forces. You get defensive, then aggressive-- at which point you not only don't wanna budge when a stranger says "Excuse me," you wanna kill him. Minus 10%. Which brings us down to 55%.

If there are other significant factors that have contributed to people's being all up in each other's faces, we can't think of them. Of course, there are factors that may be helping matters-- notably drugs, which keep many potentially inconvenient people at home, and the popularity of the words "peace" and "respect" in current usage. Add 1% for those.

56%. That's not much higher than the 50% mark-- which is where anthropologists and sociologists say all hell breaks loose...

OCEAN DRIVE PARTY: MUSTO GETS IN; HIS EDITOR EATS SHIT

2000-03-09T09:27:00.001-08:00

Door scenes are silly, of course. We're willing to endure them for a few minutes because a) there might be free food and drink inside; and b) there might be friends inside-- or, at least, celebrities. But is there anything more embarrassing than attending a door scene for more than a few minutes? Is any party fabulous enough to repair the damage done to your ego when a door test reveals you're not cute enough, young enough, dressed enough, connected enough, female enough, animated enough-- welcome enough-- to enter right away? Can any party restore the faith in humanity
lost when a door scene proves once again that guests now would actually rather savor their own desperation than revel in true hospitality?

That's why we were so sad to read about poor Karen Durbin, the Village Voice editor who was there at the door of the Ocean
Drive anniversary party in Miami, with her gossip columnist Michael Musto and a ton of other fabulous people, trying to get past the clipboard. New York magazine reports that Musto "managed to slip in," then reappeared an hour later, to help his posse get ushered in. Musto gets points for not forgetting (though it's not absolutely the best form to ditch your peeps at the door). But Karen! An hour in line? Baby, don't you pay Michael to go to monster-fabulous events so you don't have to? Please let us know if those drinks were extra-delicious or if you managed to brush a model's sleeve on the way to the ladies' room.

And don't even get us started on the ladies' rooms at those things....

RUBIN AT CITIGROUP: NICE 'N' COMFY

2000-03-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

Former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin will be paid more that $15 million this year by his new employer, Citigroup. And that doesn't include stock options, worth another $20 million or so. At the Treasury department, Rubin was scraping by with a salary of $152,000 per year. According to the New York Times, Rubin's approximately $35 million represents a new record for compensation at the "No. 2" executive level.

Citigroup's No. 1 is Sandy Weil, in case you're keeping track-- and we think you should, so you have someone to curse out loud the next time you're in line at Citibank, trying to cash your meager paycheck, and the tellers are sauntering around, chatting, behind the thick Plexiglas, instead of stepping lively. Weil received much of his compensation last year in the form of stock and stock options valued at nearly $45 million.

No. 2 had been consumer banking pioneer John S. Reed, whom we've kicked around before in this space. But he's "retiring" this year-- actually, we suspect he's been roughly handled by the titans of Citigroup-- so we're going to very gentle with him from now on.

P4M THEATER REVIEW: Benten Kozo, The Flea Theater (NY)

2000-03-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

I've been so fucking busy that I didn't get to see Benten Kozo, this new adaptation of a classic Kabuki play, until last night. It opened, like, a month ago and everybody's been telling me that the production's brilliant-- especially people whom I respect for having finely-tuned bullshit detectors that can pick out the pretentious, artsy, jerk-off sputum from a mile away. So I went down to this tiny but well-run theater in Tribeca called The Flea, and you know what? The production is fucking brilliant.

Kabuki was invented as a real people's theater, right, so the artform is full of highly entertaining characters and wildly dramatic situations-- not unlike a hit TV sit-dram, except that kabuki plays also have coarse jokes, scary demons, fighting, dancing, singing, drumming, cross-dressing, fright wigs and fright make-up, quick-change hi-jinx, and other theatrical trickery that does a good job of keeping audiences from snoozing. I won't (and probably can't, in such a limited amount of space) tell you the convoluted story of Benten Kozo-- except to say that it's about this ultra-wiley bandit and his team of four wiley bandit friends. But I will tell you some of the things that can go wrong in a production like this, all of which I was afraid of when I walked in, despite what my friends had said: gratituous modernizations, condescending direction, amateurish acting, ludicrous costuming, and excruciating length.

But Benten Kozo has none of that. Instead, the play has been contemporized judiciously with some really smart writing and street-wise costuming. The director, Jim Simpson, obviously loves the material and the characters, and made sure the (almost 30!) actors do, too. The mostly American-trained actors, by the way, do a surprisingly good job of recreating, in their own terms, many of kabuki's conventions, rather than mimicking them (as they would do poorly, inevitably). And the whole thing takes about two hours. So go see Benten Kozo before the thing closes on March 31, or I'm gonna to feel even guiltier that I was't able to tell you about this gem sooner.

STUDIES SHOW: CIGARETTES CAUSE CORPORATE DIVERSITY!

2000-03-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

Just when Philip Morris had grown more corporately responsible than we ever thought we'd see-- admitting, a few months ago, that it knew for years that tobacco was addictive-- it goes and grows more responsible. PM senior vice president Steven Parrish called nicotine "a drug" this week and said, according to the New York Times, that Philip Morris was "prepared to see cigarette sales drop and to invest elsewhere the assets now spent on tobacco."

We hope they're investing fast. The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule soon on whether or not the F.D.A. has the authority to regulate tobacco. If the Court rules that the F.D.A. does have the authority and finds (or implies) that tobacco should be officially defined as a drug, then cigarettes might be regulated as drug-delivery devices and we'd have a lot of ornery smokers on our hands. Not to mention the possibility of Philip Morris Jeans, the Philip Morris Home Furnishings Collection, and PM The Fragrance.

STUDIES SHOW: SEX CAUSED THE INTERNET!

2000-03-03T09:24:00.000-08:00

We knew something was fishy when we read in the New York Times that a new study had found that "at least 200,000 internet users are hooked on pornography sites, X-rated chat rooms or other sexual materials online."

Fishy, because 1) most internet paranoia stories are utter bullshit; 2) the study said that women and gays "may not have the same skills built up that heterosexual men have on dealing with sexual temptation," which is utter bullshit; and 3) the article reported darkly that "researchers said cybersex compulsives spent more that 11 hours a week at x-rated sites and had more problems with relationships and jobs than occasional visitors." Whereas the truth is that the internet has had a positive effect on the sexual identities of many people, irrespective of the amount of time they spend online.

A relatively safe, new ground for experimentation and role-playing, the internet affords a healthy alternative to morbid fantasy and premature, ill-thought-out action, let alone the more profound state of erotic unconsciousness which blankets many men and women, protecting them from potentially fulfilling tastes and flavors other than the two or three they're aware of. To us, it makes sense that upon the first inkling of additional fulfilling tastes and flavors provided by a new mass medium, people would invest some time... exploring. If the results get people to rethink old relationships and jobs, well, baby, that's life.

Of course, some people mis-use this new ground. They waste hours online, lying, becoming abusive, freaking on nice people. Most of those getting fucked up with internet addictions, though. are people who were fucked up in the first place-- and that fact is kinda what has emerged from a subsequent report about the study. The Industry Standard now says that the guy who conducted the study, Dr. Alvin Cooper, happens to be the "Sexploration" columnist for MSNBC, and that he used methodology that was deeply flawed. Cooper's study was directed at self-selected cybersex veterans, as opposed to random subjects, and conducted on the web, as opposed to in person, which is how the most scientifically meaningful sex studies are conducted.

We think that people looking for shit are gonna find shit-- even scientists!. And people who aren't looking for good stuff probably ain't gonna trip over it accidentally.

FAG-HATING DR. LAURA BRINGS HER SHIT TO TV

2000-02-29T09:25:00.000-08:00

Guess who's developing a TV show with Paramount Television? America's most stridently pro-inhibitionist radio personality, Dr. Laura Schlessinger. You remember Dr. Laura. Currently purveying her backward brand of morality on a three-hour daily radio show, heard by millions people on 290 stations, she's the one whom abortion clinic bombers and gay-bashers seem to cite most often when asked for their inspiration.

Dr. Laura's TV show is planned to debut this fall and already our emailbox is clogged with requests to sign petitions against it. We're recommending you come up to speed on Dr. Laura's poisonous ultra-conservatism, then email Paramount at television@pde.paramount.com and let them know what you think.

You can also contact Schlessinger's office directly by phone at 1-800-DRLAURA and by fax at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Or better yet, why not make a surprise appearance at Dr. Laura's "third annual" 50th birthday party on April 15 at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, in Dearborn, Michigan? You might bring a gift you've assembled yourself from parts available at any hardware store.

We're just kidding about that last bit. You should actually send your gift to Dr. Laura in the mail: c/o Premiere Radio Networks, xxxxx Ventura Blvd., Suite xxx, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403.

The Opinionator On... Big Banks Distributing Welfare Benefits

2000-02-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

Did anyone besides greedy bankers and lazy politicians think that Citigroup-- parent company of Citibank-- would do a humane, responsible job of distributing welfare benefits by way of ATMs and grocery store debit machines?

The idea began a few years ago, when states-- hoping to reduce fraud and improve efficiency-- began hiring private financial corporations to distribute benefits for them. Sounds like Robocop, right? Thirty-nine states have already signed over their welfare systems to these ATM card-based programs, yet the welfare recipients in those states complain that the programs aren't even working as well as the previous ones, which involved old-fashioned checks and coupons.

The complaints are major ones. The big financial corporations are deducting ATM fees from welfare recipients-- special fees that regular customers don't have to pay-- and benefit withdrawals can be limited to as few as two per month. Balance inquiries are forbidden in many of the states, and welfare recipients are not protected against card loss and theft, the way regular ATM card-holders are, with a $50 liability limit. Imagine having those problems on top of being poor in the first place.

Citigroup manages the programs of 29 states and has been cited as the worst offender-- because, in addition to charging special fees, it had been denying welfare recipients in New York City access to 63,000 conveniently-located ATMs in the MAC and NYCE networks, while being paid, according to the New York Times, "$80 million by the state over the next four years to distribute benefits..."

"New York vividly illustrates how the states, by handing off the cumbersome and politically sensitive task of providing aid for the poor, have given broad new control over welfare policy to private corporations, primarily Citigroup." said the Times.

Within Citigroup's 29 states, twelve million people now get their $640 in welfare benefits via ATM programs. Citigroup's earnings on this business have not been disclosed, but the profit margin is probably as narrow as spokespeople for the company say it is. Another company that had been distributing benefits for other states called the business "unprofitable" and is getting out of it. Citigroup tried to buy that company but was halted by the Justice Department when critics pointed out, according to the Times, that it "would raise prices and cut services if it were allowed to buy its 'only substantial competitor.'" Citigroup is currently negotiating its own, new contracts with several states.

Citigroup spokespeople, defending the corporation from criticism by the press (and even by governors of participating states!) say that poor people do have adequate access to their cash. It's exactly that kind of heartless, patriarchal, greed-inflected thinking that could turn a good, modern idea-- "Let's use electronic banking to make welfare programs run more efficiently!"-- into an archaic, hateful one: oppress the poor, ignore their pain.

GIRLS RULE: FALL 2000

2000-02-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

It has always felt to us that behind Girls Rule! is a great slogan rather than an important theory: Teen Power! But great slogans have won great wars-- which helps explain why Girl's Rule producer Darren Greenblatt has been winning increased attention to the young design talent behind creative teen apparel. For six years Greenblatt has been giving us shows that provoke big thoughts about production, distribution, market, price-point, and the relationship between established couture and the evolving street scene, as well as about more designer-y issues of silhouette, fabric, and the like.

This year's show incorporated collections by five labels: Hybrid, Planet Yumthing, OP, Chuck Roaste, and One. The best by far was Hybrid, designed by Aissa Martin-- showing imagination (in, say, the long, sexy "bustle" skirt in tyvek, with a horizontal band of elastic just below the butt, or the fiercely glamorous white blanket coat) and an interpretation of luxe that makes sense for a girl of 2000 (the iguana camouflage polar fleece zip vest with matching gloves). With this season's "global urban nomad" looks, Martin again pushes the boundary of creativity in popularly priced urban sportswear, thereby rocking our world at least as much the genius stitchers who have zillionaire clients. Great Look: Martin's version of the open-shouldered long-sleeve top, which she calls a "Barbarella top."

The rest of the collections looked a little too tiresomely granny or improbably Western ranch to our eyes. Best Moment: a model in the Chuck Roaste show stopped halfway down the runway, pulled off her jeans, turned them inside out, put them back on again and kept walking. It was done with kicky humor-- Roaste is offering "the world's first reversable jeans"-- and brought a round of spontaneous applause.

THE ORGANIZATION FOR RETURNING FASHION INTEREST: FALL 200O "NEVER SMARTY-PANTS, NEVER ARTSY-FARTSY..."

2000-02-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

How does ORFI (The Organization for Returning Fashion Interest) manage to avoid overthinking the whole fashion thing? For such a brainy group-- made up of artists, architects, and designers who, according to their literature, "work collectively to create a visual a structural language that guides the design and development of apparel pieces and clothing"-- the collective never comes across as smarty-pants or artsy-fartsy. Instead, they somehow kinda play, rather than work, with clothing cliches, exploding them in a fun way, according to real-life usage rather than theory. (Though real life is the hardest thing to keep rediscovering, isn't it?)

For this year's show, ORFI rummaged everyone's closet for a kind of Miuccia Prada-meets-Pina Bausch look: mom's (for the fitted suit jacket), dad's (for the trousers), Aunt Mary's (for the white lady-pumps), big brother's (for the dopey parka), roommate's (for the little top that's in a color you never buy yourself), etc. The show spoke of our culture intimately but from a distance, kinda the way artist Matthew Barney's work does-- especially during the parts of the show that pushed past the theatrical to the mysteriously ceremonial. The presentation of a tray of glittering bijoux, by a beaming nymph dressed in sparkly tatters, could have come right out out of a murkily ironic dance theater piece by Bausch.

Would you dress like this? The point is that you probably already do-- and that a nice, new ORFI shirt will give you another way to think about it. Most memorable detail: the hair stapled into stiffish sheets and ridges: pretty and terrifying all at once. Least possible merchandising angle: boys in skirts. (Has never worked and, outside of Scotland and the South Seas, never will.)

TOM OF FINLAND: FALL 2000: "MEN SHOWING AND LOOKING..."

2000-02-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

Love that Tom of Finland menswear-- "guy clothes, not just gay clothes," according to Gary Robinson, who co-designs the hyper-hyper masculine line with David Johnson. But why the wimpy models? On the runway this year, wearing another hot collection of leather, denim, and camouflage duds for the porn-star lifestyle, were a bunch of pretty boys, each of whom looked like he had about one-eighth the testosterone necessary to pull off something like a silver nylon jumpsuit (worn totally unzipped, pecs and abs a-flexing, with a little bikini brief). The eye make-up didn't help.

What's interesting is how all-American Tom on Finland looks: motorcycle jackets, trenchcoats, leather pants, muscle shirts, all worn with boots. First seen widely in '50s gay muscle mags, in erotic drawings of super-endowed leather men by a Finnish World War II vet named Touko Laaksonen, the look may started as a kind of worship for the Allied forces heroes who'd just saved the free world. But Tom's popularity among the Warhols and the Mapplethorpes of the world had as much to do with men showing and looking as with what is being shown and looked at-- and nowadays Tom of Finland-style posturing and display seems no more outre than what you see in any club on the planet, straight or gay.

Has popular culture arrived at a point that validates Laaksonen's drawings as visionary? Absolut Vodka thinks so. They presented the show and even sponsored the creation of "exclusive Absolut fashions" that were worked into the collection-- like the black "barvest" with front panels shaped like Absolut bottles (worn without shirt, of course).

SANDY DALAL: FALL/WINTER 2000 MEN'S: "THE RIGHT KIND OF RANDOM..."

2000-02-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

Trust Sandy Dalal to reveal the true sexiness of The Dweeb. In the designer's fall/winter 2000 men's show, it was the clunky striped suits that gave it all away: close-fitting but still nicely undertailored sacks that say "I grew two inches since last semester but have been too busy lying around with my guitar to buy any new clothes." Yet these suits aren't ironic, exactly. They are for serious dress-up-- they just acknowledge that dress-up occasions, like an audience with the headmaster, can be a little squirmy. (Nobody in Prada or Helmut Lang squirms, right?)

Now, Dalal's overcoats, they're ironic. They look luxurious and flowy and sculpted, like something you'd borrow from dad. Put 'em over one of the suits and damn if that skinny, greasy-haired boy doesn't look like he deserves a big "A" for effort.

Also seen on the runway: sleeveless sweaters I also wanna call "neckless," though they were described in the program as crew-necked, which is way too structured a term for them. The silhouettes of Dalal's whole collection speak of the right kind of random: running off without definite rule or method.

P4M ANTI-REVIEW: Bill T. Jones's You Walk? (Lincoln Center Festival)

2000-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Modern dance icon Bill T. Jones has said that his new work, You Walk?, "strives to stay clear of polemics," even while it is, like much of his previous work, "informed by a myriad of historical facts, ideological conflicts, political tragedies, serendipitous ironies, and significant innovations." And it's true that You Walk?, a full-evening work that had its New York premiere last week at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, does feel more a product of Jones the big-hearted poetic formalist than of Jones the pissed-off ideologue who is always railing against racism, homophobia, AIDS apathy, and the rest.

Generously showcasing the individual qualities of his dancers, who are of widely different shapes and ethnic backgrounds, Jones sets You Walk? to a series of musical selections reflecting the influence of Latin culture in the New World-- everything from the indigenous music of native peoples (as in Southern Africans and Amazon Indians, as well as medieval Europeans, meaning the Spanish) to "the music of cultures in collision and conquest" (as in a propagandistic opera promoting a conqueror's values, written during the Baroque era by a Jesuit missionary). Though You Walk? was a thrillingly successful piece of dance theater, we're going to be polemical ourselves, in this instance, and decline to review the work-- for the simple reason that we didn't get press comps.

Platform staff is invited to tons of events every day, by marketers and press reps who understand how culture is moving and how Platform's growing audience helps drive that movement. We never take our entree for granted; we feel, rather, that it's our deepest journalistic responsibility to go to events, think about them carefully, and report back to you, our viewers. It's because we believe that so many of Jones's politico-artistic concerns are resonant with yours that we were disappointed when the Festival denied our request for review tickets-- and why, moreover, we question Jones's uncomplaining participation in the Festival. OK, he must accept the fact that it's gonna cost people $38 to see You Walk? at Lincoln Center; that's economics. But must he also endorse a marketing and publicity plan that's all about selling out houses and hardly at all about expanding the critical context for his work and widening the audience for it?

The Lincoln Center Festival, though in many ways brilliantly executed by career arts administrator Nigel Redden and lavishly sponsored by Bloomberg, Lexus, AT&T, Philip Morris, and Time Warner, comes close to embodying certain "conquerors' values" that Jones has always abhorred. Its primary goal, rather than to help culture move forward, seems to be to score as many of those embarrassingly predictable New York Times arts features as possible and to use them to hook up auditoriumfuls of Times addicts with edgey-feeling art that's nonetheless corporately approved. That's one reason why critics continue to gripe about "the structural smugness of big arts festivals"-- and why some Bill T. Jones fans fear the choreographer is headed for a commercially viable revival production of Cats for the Lincoln Center Festival of 2010, to be performed for a uni-cultural audience whose median age is 62.

IS IGNORANCE BLISS? HOW INCOMPETENT PEOPLE STAY THAT WAY

2000-01-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

Wanna hear something scary? Incompetent people don't know how incompetent they are. According to the New York Times, Cornell University psychology professor David Dunning has found in studies that incompetent people are "usually supremely confident in their abilities-- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well." Which is why respected heart surgeons, world-famous violinists, and successful CEO's, instead of being comforted by their achievements, do feel a bit of trepidation when embarking on a task-- trepidation somehow improves their performance.

Athletes know when they're incompetent. So do stand-up comics. But what about the unfunny guy who persists in telling jokes? What about ordinary people with desk jobs? Most of us get too little useful feedback on how to improve our personal and professional performance. Worse, in the name of "support" we often get mindless praise that we don't deserve. Think of the last time you smiled politely at the Unfunny Guy's lame joke. Think of the last time you tepidly said "Great!" when Unstylish Girl showed up with a ridiculous accessory.

The skills required to do things well are often the same skills necessary to recognize competence in the first place, concludes Dunning. Which kinda means that, while not wallowing in a mire of self-doubt, we should all be in a constant state of what might be called "positive self-underestimation." Such a state catalyzes clue-seeking, that most necessary aspect of human evolution-- which these days expresses itself in job evaluations, religious observation, and, of course, TV makeover shows.

P4M ART REVIEW: TODD EBERLE AND HARRY BERTOIA AT ROBERT MILLER GALLERY

2000-01-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

What is technology but the practical application of knowledge? For evidence of two very different but surprisingly harmonious applications, check out the Robert Miller art gallery in New York (526 West 26th Street), for an exhibition combining the work of the young photographer Todd Eberle and deceased sculptor(slash furniture and jewelry designer slash architect) Harry Bertoia (1915-1978).

Eberle, known for the revealing interior and decor shots he publishes in glossy magazines like Vanity Fair, contributes eerily sensual, large-scale photographs of vintage computer components (think '60s IBM and '80s Apple), while Bertoia is represented by several of his large-scale metal "sounding sculptures." The sculptures are kinda primally geometric and resonate visually with the crisply orthogonal lines in Eberle's computers. But that's a less powerful interplay than the one produced when viewers touch the Bertoias, as they should, and make them "sing" the way the sculptor designed them to do when installed, say, in an architectural plaza and caught in the wind. It's then that the exhibition becomes joyously clangorous, suddenly making you feel like you're in some kind of divine, or at least benevolent, machine. No mere catalog essay could do such an elegant job of describing the deep connection between such different forms of the practical.

P4M "APPOINTMENT TELEVISION" PRE-VIEW: "Nazi America: A Secret History"

2000-01-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

Americans often express this smug "It can't happen here" attitude about ideologies they find abhorrent, like Communism and Nazism. Well, it can happen here. As you know, there have been plenty of American Communists-- many of them progressive, well-meaning intellectuals-- and lots of American Nazis-- all of them hateful, misguided assholes.

"Nazi America: A Secret History," showing tonight on the History Channel (9 p.m.), documents the latter from the '30s, when they marched through American cities as the German-American Bund; through the '50s, when George Lincoln Rockwell was promising to "kill every Jew, Catholic, and Negro;" to the present, when Aryan Nationeers march in Skokie, set up web sites, thump The Turner Diaries, and otherwise make things bad for nice people.

Why watch? Well, because the fact that it does happen here, and everywhere, means that we have to be in a constant state of making sure it doesn't happen anywhere. Watching mad-nasty white supremicists on TV can help us stay in touch with some necessary commitment against that shit. According to the New York Times, Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks neo-Nazi movements, "estimates that some 500 such groups are at work." That's a lot of shit to counter.

P4M MOVIE REVIEW: Vin Diesel Slays In Sci-Fi Thriller, Pitch Black

2000-01-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

You gotta keep an eye out for the new sci-fi thriller Pitch Black, coming in February. Reports on advance screenings are that the movie out-Alien's Alien by a light year.

Starring Vin Diesel, who played supersexy Private Caparzo in Saving Private Ryan (and also provided the supersexy voice of the robot in The Iron Giant), Pitch Black is about bunch of people on a space liner, crash landing on a sun-scorched, somewhat inhospitable planet that turns, when night suddenly falls, completely inhospitable. There are nasty creatures. The only guy with smarts enough to save anyone is Diesel, who plays a supersexy, primal-yet-poetic escaped murderer named Riddick.

Sounds predictable, but we hear that Pitch Black is so thrillingly plausible at every turn that it sucks you in and keeps you there. (Can you say the same about Alien and its sequels? Getting the little girl out of the alien hatchery in Aliens? Never happen.) You can enjoy the fantastic action in Pitch Black without suspending too much disbelief, which is definitely fresh-- and we hear this from a film reviewer who is as much an armchair scientist as a sci-fi movie junky. The planet's arid ecology and twenty-two-year-long orbital cycle? Plausible. The movie's awesome special effects-- creatures swarming and celestial bodies eclipsing? Plausible. The behavior of stranded space travellers, the look of their salvaged belongings, even the crash landing sequence in which the "windshield" blows out? All pretty plausible.

And if there was ever been a big, bad character to rocket off into the sunset with Major Sequel Potential, it is Riddick. We're told Diesel slays in Pitch Black (the result, in part, of some incredibly smart direction by David Twohy, who also directed 1996's The Arrival). The actor is also a filmmaker, having presented his feature Strays at Sundance in 1997 and currently developing Doormen, based on his experience as a bouncer in New York City. But word is that Pitch Black could make Diesel a major action star, so don't expect him to have too much time to spend in the future as an auteur.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL (AND, OH YEAH, GO AHEAD AND SMASH A SKULL OR TWO)

1999-12-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

A recommendation to the court-martial in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, that's trying 18-year-old Pvt. Calvin Glover for the premeditated murder of 21-year-old Pfc. Barry Winchell: stop the proceedings and smash his skull with a baseball bat while he's sleeping. Do this as soon as possible; spend any money you save on lengthy court proceedings on a nice holiday party.

Actually, that would be damned beastly, wouldn't it? OK, better go on with the trial. Just get justice done quickly, tuck Glover away for life somewhere, rethink the military's laughable, prejudice-affirming policy of "don't ask, don't tell," then go have a nice holiday party. Glover is accused of beating Winchell to death with a baseball bat while he slept in his barracks last July 5, after months of what fellow soldiers have testified was Glover's non-stop anti-gay harrassment of Winchell. According to the New York Times, two days before the attack Winchell had been "taunted by Glover into a fist fight," which Winchell won easily. Glover couldn't handle the humiliation and "got even" (the quotes are ours).

On third thought, brain the guy.

CHROMOSOME MAPPED: WELCOME TO THE SCI-FI FUTURE

1999-12-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

You know those mythical moments in sci-fi movies which radically alter all future action? Like from Terminator: the moment Sky Net went conscious? Here's a real one: scientists working in a consortium spanning Britain, the U.S., and Japan have just decoded the basic "human blueprint" information in an entire chromosome-- a major milestone in the grand, ongoing project of mapping the complete human genome.

"I don't often pick up a scientific paper and find myself getting chills, as I did when I saw this chromosomal landscape," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the human genome project at the National Institutes of Health, quoted in the New York Times. Chromosomes contain genes, of course, and they help determine a whole lot about who we are, how we act, how we age, etc. Though many hope that detailed knowledge of the human genome will benefit medicine (since most diseases have a genetic component), some fear that it will also aid those wanting to eliminate various forms of sexual and "criminal" behavior-- let alone "undesirable" characteristics like frizzy hair (which Einstein had) and a tendency toward deafness (which Beethoven had).

The genome mapping project began in 1990-- the first time it became technically feasible-- and is expected to be complete by 2005. What happens then? Sleekly demonic bio-laboratories growing rows of headless torso-sacs of organs, fresh for harvesting and transplanting into the decaying bodies of the super-rich? Parents determining their babies' sex, eye color, hair color, skin color, and body type? Everybody living for 175 years with eery vigor (and can't you just see the groovy old timers sporting their favorite 150-year-old jeans)?

Stick around. That world is practically here.

BUILD CUSTOM SNEAKERS AT THE NIKE SITE-- UNLESS YOU'RE GOD!

1999-11-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

Nike's just introduced customized sneakers you can "build" yourself, order and pay for at the new NIKEiD web site. Check it out. For just $10 more than the standard costs of the models available (the Air Turbulence running show and the Air Famished cross trainer), you can choose your sneaker's base color scheme (from three available) and its accent color (from six).

You can also put your personal ID on the back of the sneaker (up to eight letters), in the accent color-- which is fine if your name is Nancy, but forget if your parents named you God. When we typed "God" into the interface, the letters "G-O-D" appeared on the shoe, but when we pressed the Submit button we got the message, "Your Personal ID Has Not Been Approved." "Allah"? Yes. "Jesus"? Yes.

"Fuck me"? No.
"Kill Mom?" No.
"Kiss Mom"? Yes.
"Adidas"? No.
"Rape?" No.
"War"? Yes.
"Heroin"? No.
"Drugs?" Yes.
"Cock"? No.
"JizzBomb?" Yes.

"Dork Wad" didn't make it, but inexplicably "Dorkwad" did. We wouldn't get too excited about the possibility of getting a pair of Air Dorkwads out of Nike, though. The site's FAQ says that "all personalized messages are immediately put through a filter to determine if they contain words or phrases that we do not want placed on our footwear. Nike reserves the right to cancel any messages up to 24 hours after they have been submitted." In fact, we learned that the company is also working with the police in its home town of Portland, Oregon to screen out gang messages.

So much for "the customer is always right."

RUBIN GETS COMFY AT HEARTLESS CITIGROUP

1999-10-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

We were fine with the announcement that the former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is joining Citigroup, parent company of Citibank. But what disappoints us is that Rubin will evidently not be joining our local branch of Citibank in Brooklyn Heights as a teller.

After five weeks of what the New York Times says was "almost constant meetings to negotiate," Rubin was welcomed into the nation's largest financial services corporation by co-chairmen and chief executives Sanford I. Weill and John S. Reed. Rubin's gonna have a "corner office in the company's blond-wood and glass executive suite," alongside Weill and Reed, at 399 Park Avenue, and he's gonna head the executive group of Citibank's board, which means, basically, that he will be checking in for all strategic and managerial decisions but not getting awfully hands-on about the company's day-to-day doings-- a nice gig that's kind of a reward for a smart guy who presided over one of the longest economic booms in American history. Trouble is, day-to-day is kind where Citibank is falling down these days.

Last week, we presented a teller at our Brooklyn branch with a money order for $1000 that we'd borrowed hastily from our sister, only to learn that the money order would not be handled as cash. This was a big problem: a medical bill was overdue, a doctor was threatening legal action, and though people owe us a ton of money we only had $23 in the bank. We learned, in fact, that the money order would take even longer to clear than our sister's personal check would have taken, so we were deeply fucked-- and surprised that a) the teller didn't give a shit when we calmly and politely explained that this was an emergency and asked if anything special could be done; and b) the person we were referred to was a kind of floor-walking "hostess," whose job it is, apparently, to explain that there are no bank officers to speak to at this branch and that if this were truly an emergency the correct path of action would be... to get some cash and deposit it.

We think Robert Rubin would have seen the logical flaw in this reasoning. Moreover, we feel he might have had a bit more heart about our predicament. Rubin's heart has been demonstrated amply in his support while in government, for example, of the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to make a portion of their lending available within poor, inner-city areas. A lack of heart is exactly why the Citibank brand has been tarnishing rapidly among people in our age group. So maybe, over the next few months, as Rubin begins the quiet, high-level promoting and lobbying that's obviously part of his assignment at Citigroup, he can spare a moment to take the elevator down a few floors, look in on the smiley-faces who oversee consumer banking, and see if he can help them get their butts in gear.

PARTYING WITH THE PERSONAL BELONGINGS OF MARILYN MONROE

1999-10-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

Last night we checked out the party at Christie's for the Marilyn Monroe auction. It was fun rubbing elbows with the odd but entertaining mix of folks who showed up, from recently installed Vibe editor Emil Wilbekin, to over-seasoned glamor dolls Arlene Dahl and Monique Van Vooren, to sexy crooner Lenny Kravitz (who came dressed in a psychedelic multi-colored fur-trimmed coat), to inane TV chatterboxes Richard Mineards and George Whipple, to the tightass pin-stripe-suit-and-velvet-headband-couples you always find at auction houses.

Scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night (October 27 and 28), the Monroe auction will give some of us ordinary people a chance to own 1500 items that have been irradiated by the most intense form of celebrity there is: the platinum and diamond eternity band that Joe DiMaggio gave Marilyn for their 1954 wedding (estimate: $30,000-50,000); the white baby grand piano that originally belonged to Marilyn's mom, which had been sold after mom was institutionalized but then rescued by Marilyn after years of searching (estimate: $10,000-15,000); the black sequinned dress that Marilyn wore in Korea in February, 1954, while singing to 10,000 soldiers (estimate: $30,000-50,000; plus lots of other dresses, furniture, jewelry, furs, shoes, books, odd household items, and, yes, a few bustiers.

Now, the only thing better than an open-bar party featuring choice-quality passed hors d'oeuvres, is one that's set amidst the personal belongings of one of America's greatest pop culture icons. But Marilyn goes beyond that, doesn't she? Her intelligence, talent, and beauty, the generosity obvious in both her performances and her public persona, her vulnerable yet still rather steely nature, the fact that she tangled with masters of the universe and may have been executed by one of them-- all that takes her beyond pop culture into some realm like religion. In fact, after wandering from gallery to gallery, finally coming into the spotlit presence of that spectacular "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" dress-- a dazzling beaded dream of idealized nudity-- we felt like we were entering the sanctum sanctorum of some eternal temple and coming face to face with the goddess. (Lucky bastard, JFK.)

Of course, a couple of glasses of wine amplified this effect. Actually, we stayed much later than we'd planned to (and staying too long at a party is something we hate doing because it kinda shows that you don't have any place more important to get to, which, in New York, means social death). But an interesting thing happened as the Christie's party thinned out: it became easier and easier to see the stuff we'd missed the first few times around. So we could zoom in even closer on all the details we really wanted to see-- inscriptions on photographs, notes in scripts, makeup stains around collars, hand-done stitches on the birthday dress-- and we wound up with an almost overpoweringly physical sensation of Marilyn herself: the woman whose feet once scuffed into those slippers after an exhausting day at the studio, whose shoulders once slumped beneath that bulky Mexican cardigan.

Yet, seeing all that stuff didn't feel as sad as other celebrity auctions have felt. Nureyev, Jackie O, the Windsors-- those auction viewings felt pathetic, even gruesome to us. This one had a real swinger vibe, like our fantasy of a Rat Pack party. The canned music helped-- upbeat standards from the '50s and '60s-- and then there was all that stardust...

P4M ALBUM REVIEW: Nightmare On Wax Carboot Soul

1999-08-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

As far as I'm concerned, my bumpy years since 1995 have been made bearable by Smokers Delight, the awesomely chill LP by Nightmares on Wax, which is basically producer/musical wizard George Evelyn. Hazy and soul-drenched, like a tranquilizer and a stimulant mixed, Smokers Delight reveals the bluntiest, sexiest side of hip-hop the way an Dionysian oracle reveals the meaning of life. A little "Ah-hah!" mixed with a whole lotta "Ahhhh...."

Now there's no way I could ever review, in a responsibly journalistic way, NOW's new album, Carboot Soul. I can tell you that I love it; I can tell you why-- basically, because the beats, basslines, and melodies pulse with the inevitability of a hot summer romance. I can tell you how the new album fits into NOW's career trajectory-- it's an album recorded live, because live is what Evelyn is feeling right now. ("What I want to do is merge soul and hip-hop," he says. "That's why I'll bring in the live aspect..."). And I can certainly recommend you go buy Carboot Soul (which derives its name from the vinyl that Evelyn used to stalk while prowling car trunk sales).

But review a follow-up to the album that gives you reason to draw breath? Uh-uh. Nope, I'm just giving thanks for an artist who can produce this much sheer musical jizflow. Get back to me, if you want, when I'm, like, 60, and I'll tell you which of Evelyn's albums looks best, journalistically.

The Opinionator on... Craig Kilbourn

1999-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

TV'S MOST ANNOYINGLY SMUG WHITE GUY REPLACES TV'S MOST HARMLESSLY OUT-OF-TOUCH WHITE GUY

Craig Kilbourn, host of Comedy Central's "Daily Show", is taking over for CBS's "Late Late Show" host Tom Snyder, when Snyder retires next year. Sure, that's gonna bring a whole new dimension of unwatchability to the "Late Late Show," but who's going to deaden the "Daily Show"? Is it true that Comedy Central is talking to TV's most dishearteningly unprogressive white guy, "Loveline"'s Dr. Drew?

What's Up With... Banning Smoking in New York State Prisons

1999-07-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

So the Pataki administration wants to ban smoking in New York state prisons by 2001. According to the New York Times, the plan applies to all 70,000 inmates as well as 30,000 state prison employees, and will be phased in gradually: "Inmates' smoking will be limited to housing units starting Jan. 1, 2000. No smoking will be allowed in day rooms and television rooms of medium- and minimum-security prisons, and maximum-security inmates will be allowed to smoke in cell blocks, galleries, and tiers. Starting July 1, inmates will only be able to smoke in their assigned sleeping areas, and starting Jan. 1, 2001, smoking will be prohibited inside all state prisons." Outside areas like exercise yards are exempt.

In explanation, the authorities cite the potential dangers of tobacco smoke in enclosed spaces. They will be offering-- patriarchal benificence!-- nicotine patches and stop-smoking programs.

OK, question: YOU GUYS WANT A FUCKING RIOT? Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you, but c'mon-- taking away one of the, like, two daily pleasures a poor inmate can look forward to self-administering? Can't inmates be allowed to focus on the smoking issue after they've, quote, settled their debt to society and perhaps cleared a little mindshare for some next steps in self-improvement?

To weigh in with your opinion on this, go straight to the message boards. (And do not collect $200.)

What's Up With... Our Own Attitude About Summer Movie Merchandising?

1999-07-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

We suddenly realized last week how over those Virgin Atlantic/Austin Powers billboards we were-- you know, "Virgin Shaglantic." Our smile had already faded for the Austin Powers Heinekin ads, and the Austin Powers-Starbucks tie-in seemed stupid to start with. That's why, despite the relative success of the Austin Powers merchandising program as a piece business strategy-- you know, matching products and promotions to demographics and putting them in the market at the right time-- we were all set to write a nasty piece about how annoying movie tie-ins are.

Then, on Friday, our Inspect Gadge dolls arrived. Disney sent two over by messenger. We ripped open the box and immediately yanked the plastic watch serving as Inspector Gadget's belt from around his waist and stuck it on our wrist. With that slightly dangerous eagerness of kids on Christmas morning, we started twirling the propellers on his hat, and extending and unfolding his legs, one of which opens into a pair of pliers, the other of which contains an LED signaller light. We tugged and twisted the arms, and were delighted to find that one of them functions as a water gun! Giggling we ran to the sink, charged the gun, and went around the office attacking Platform co-workers.

The best feature: the front of Inspector Gadget's chest is a "secret communicator." It comes off and kinda flips open like a cell phone; you press the hidden red button and it goes "weee-ooo, weee-ooo," or "doodle-oodle-oot, doodle-oodle-oot," and stuff like that. We sure wish the talk-activated Samsung flip-phone we just bought were in the shape of a man's coat breast with shirt-and-tie.

The Gadget dolls-- excuse us, action figures-- provided us with at least three-and-a-half minutes of uncomplicated, care-free entertainment. They're part of a McDonald's promotion, in which you get a different chunk of the figure each week with the purchase of a Happy Meal, for eight weeks, until you have the whole thing. (The figures arrived with coupons for a McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese, by the way.) We'd seen the trailer for Inspector Gadget and hadn't yet decided whether the film is a charming Jim Carry-meets-Tim Burton thing, or whether it's just plain weird. The former, we now suspect.

We're still basically neg on summer movie tie-in shit. The Tarzan and Phantom Menace stuff looks deeply lame. But if someone were to send us, say, a Wild Wild West giant mechanical tarantula, we'd probably be pretty happy-- at least for three-and-a-half minutes.

What's Up With... The Dive Stick Recall?

1999-06-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

You must have seen by now that the Government is recalling 20 million dive sticks-- those hard, cylindrical toy things that you stand at the bottom of your swimming pool and dive down to retrieve.

According to the New York Times, "the safety commission said that at least six children had been rectally or vaginally impaled by the toys... which have been on the market for about 20 years at various retail stores."

Now, we hate the idea of kids getting hurt-- whether in the middle of spirited, summer aquatic group horseplay or more private, personal explorations in a quiet pool when mom's gone inside to make some lemonade. But recalling 20 million units of a tried-and-true summer toy? That sounds like an overreaction-- and to us, it's an overreation based on ire that would better be focussed on, say, the guns that kids the same age are also playing with.

The Opinionator on... The Indian Bomb

1999-06-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

India's recent nuclear defense initiatives may alarm Pakistan and China, piss off Japan and the United States, and give ideas to Iran. They also seem oddly gangstery for a country whose middle class is the largest in the world. Exactly what part of arms racing hasn't long been discredited, anyway? Believing yourself protected if your guns are large and numerous enough? Wasting millions of dollars on satanic hardware, that could better be spent on agriculture and education? Orgying in a false sense of national pride and respect as a world power? Scaring your neighbors, which since the Cold War have included every other country in the world?

VOLPE SENTENCED IN LOUIMA CASE: NO RECTAL JAMMING TO BE ADMINISTERED

1999-06-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Now, we accept that Anglo-American jurisprudence embodies significant moral improvements over good old "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" thinking, but golly, wouldn't a stiffer sentence have been more effective in the Louima case?

Former police officer Justin Volpe just got thirty years for jamming a broken broomstick up Abner Louima's rectum in the bathroom of the 70th Precinct station house, in the now-famous, monstrously inappropriate and obviously racist assault on the Haitian immigrant during an investigation one night in August, 1997. Volpe, 27, could have gotten life. And though Judge Eugene H. Nickerson did a good job of balancing the sentence between the harshness demanded by Louima supporters and the leniency expected for a white former police officer, we propose considering another option entirely.

Instead of spending taxpayer money to house, clothe, and feed Volpe for the next thirty years (or twenty-five, if he stays in line), why not send him to some sort of court-created mental realignment facility, to receive a rectal jamming of his own, then spend a year or so talking about this experience every day with a nice counselor. Wouldn't that more effective-- not just for Volpe, who may or not use the opportunity to interrogate and overcome his own racism and rage, but for other NYPD officers, who would then understand that they were living in a kind of sci-fi world in which rectal jammings are administered by the authorities?

ECSTASY SOMEWHAT LEGALIZED IN SWITZERLAND

1999-05-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

You must have heard by now: The Supreme Court of Switzerland has ruled that Ecstasy is in the same class (B), legally, as marijuana. While the Court emphasized that they didn't think Ecstasy was harmless, they did hold that it was not "a serious threat to its users' health, either mentally or physically."

Good for you, Swiss judges. You understand that though many legal substances are harmful in some way, especially when consumed in excess-- cigarettes, bacon, chocolate-- they also often confer benefits, chief among which is sensual pleasure. Ecstasy is even more beneficial than that: It seems to liberate people from their industrially-formulated emotional straightjackets-- a factor to be factored into any human equation. One civilization's most serious threats, after all, is unfriendliness....

THE FATHER OF VINYL, DEAD AT 100

1999-05-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Guess who died? The guy who invented vinyl. His name was Waldo Semon and he was 100.

Semon was a chemist who came up with a particularly useful formulation of vinyl in 1928, while working for B.F. Goodrich, the rubber company. He had been playing around with polymers that other people thought were useless, when he finally concocted a new plastic that could be molded and stretched, and was waterproof and non-conductive. The Wall Street crash of 1929 kept people from wanting to jump into marketing the stuff, but in the '30s Semon got a patent for it and Goodrich began manufacturing it. Soon, vinyl goods like shower curtains and raincoats started appearing in stores.

Semon was thus chief progenitor of the Golden Age of Vinyl, which dawned in the '60s and would eventually encompass blobby Naugahyde sofas, kitchen floor tiles in avocado Congoleum, shoulder bags by Lark, Camaros with pebbly-textured tops, and, most importantly, classic James Brown LPs.

Thanks, Waldo. Way to invent.

What's Up With... Spike Lee and Those Ads for the U.S. Navy?

1999-05-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

You probably saw the ad in the June/July issue of Vibe-- right there with So So Def records and Dada footwear, in prime editorial space, between the article on Eightball and MJG, and the "Wipe Out" fashion spread. At first, you might think the ad is for a sexy sci-fi movie, since nine-tenths of it is a picture of a giant, hulking, grey metal vessel right out of Alien, complete with towering antennae and holes that look like air intakes or exhaust vents. But the other one-tenth is a picture of an idealistic-looking young recruit dressed in white, plus some text about developing honor, courage, and commitment.

"Let the journey begin," is the tagline. Now, with all due respect to the Navy's peace-keeping functions (and to the fact that it gave the nice folks at Vibe some bucks to run its ads), two questions should arise in the minds of readers whose favorite MCs are always stressing the importance of seeking truth: A) "Where is this journey to?" and B) "Is anybody gonna suffer once we get there, and why?" Right? 'Cause if we respond to the So So Def ad, all we do is buy the upcoming Jermaine Dupri album. If we respond to the Dada ad, we buy the sneakers and get to look supposedly dope. But if we respond to the Navy ad, we join an armed force and agree to support a military-industrial agenda that, given history, is probably always dangerous to some poor population, somewhere.

Maybe the manufacture of records and sneakers depends on this agenda, and maybe not. Maybe we want records and sneakers at any cost, and maybe not. But this is shit we're thinking about-- especially now that Spike Lee has agreed to use his formidable powers as director/producer/creative director to make a series of commercials for the U.S. Navy. We just read that he's signed up to make six-- and that he's "using hand-held cameras to give the commercials more of a documentary feel."

Um, we don't know about you, but we're feeling kinda mixed about the fact that the master of Malcolm X is working on pseudo-docu-mercials for the U.S. Government....

TOMMY HILFIGER'S NEW TV SPOTS FOR "FREEDOM": FEW ENOUGH? SIX TOO MANY?

1999-05-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wanted to see millions of dollars in creative development get pissed away in millions of dollars of media buys, you would only have had to watch this weekend's TV spots for Tommy Hilfiger's new fragrance, Freedom.

The spot was everywhere-- on NBC, on E! The first time we saw it, we thought, "Oh, there's that new Tommy fragrance." The second time we saw it, we thought, "Oh there's that new Tommy fragrance again. I guess it's for both men and women." The third time we saw it-- and this is all during one hour on Saturday afternoon-- we thought,"Hmmm, that Tommy commercial, again. The music's, uh, really great."

It was when we saw the commercial for the fourth time the things started to turn. We thought, "You know what? That music's actually kind of annoying. And besides, how arrogant is Tommy to think that he can get everybody to go to the mall tomorrow, to get a bottle of Freedom, if he blankets the airwaves with commercials for it today?" The fifth time was the clincher. We were fed up, and we knew that others were, too. Having heard Tommy himself say over and over again in the spot that he dedicates his new fragrance "to the youth of America"-- his well-rehearsed sincerity decaying progressively in its multiple reverberations-- you could feel the credulity of an entire demographic shutting down across the nation.

Which, of course, won't keep us from buying the stuff, if it smells good. We just won't believe in it, that's all.

What's Up With... Parental Alarm over Pokemon?

1999-05-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

Sure, in the last three years since Pokemon was introduced we've learned that Nintendo has figured out a way not only to tax children-- who must have the cards, the figures, the comic books, and/or the game itself-- but to further endear them to violence by making it cutesy.

The most dangerous part of the Pokemon phenomenon, however, has just been revealed: the new CD, released in the wake of the megahit movie. Incorporating tracks by Britney Spears ("Soda Pop"), Christina Aguilera ("We're a Miracle"), NSYNC ("Somewhere Someday"), Billy Crawford ("Pokemon Theme"), 98 Degrees ("Fly With Me"), and many more stars of the aggressively harmless synthpop category, the CD is so threateningly far beyond upbeat that Saturday morning TV looks like Shoah by comparison.

Whatever you do, don't listen to this disc! Test audiences of 3-to-8-year-olds responded to forced repeated listenings by sinking into profound and persistent vegetative states. Reports are that a number of comatose kids have choked on their own drool, their formerly bright little eyes rolled back in their heads!

The Opinionator On... The Guy Who Cuts In Front Of You At The Open Bar

1999-05-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to the opening of a benefit photography show in a giant Chelsea party garage. The invitation had said "open bar," but when I got there I discovered that there was, in fact, only one bar for a crowd of maybe a thousand people. So immediately I joined the hundred or so people who thought it more important to line up for free liquor than to go greet friends or look at the photographs.

Except we weren't a line; we were a clump. You know what open bars are like: everybody pretending to socialize while aggressively scrutinizing the bartenders, who are taking too much time searching for cranberry juice, uncorking a bottles, or explaining to some jerk on a cell phone why there's no Jack, or if there is, why there's no more ice; everybody kinda mincing and squeezing forward, while those already served struggle outward with their drinks; everybody kinda hyper-aware of everybody else's position and trying to look cooperative, even if unwilling to give anybody else a fucking inch.

I was badly in need of a vodka-- actually, three of them, which I planned to pour into one glass, as is my practice at parties like this. And I was encouraged when the chick in front of me suddenly swore and bailed. I had claimed a few square millimeters of her space by shifting my weight forward onto my left leg, when this guy outa nowhere butted ahead of me. I was gonna let it go, but then he parlayed his lateral insinuation into a full-blockage stance, directly in front of me. Now I'm standing there with the back of this guy's "so shabby it's supposed to be cool" brown corduroy jacket in my face. I couldn't even see the bartenders. Plus, the guy looked like a model, which I found extra-annoying.

While considering what to do, I smiled my vacant "Isn't this a great, big fabulous party?" smile-- although some primitive part of me needed to push this fucker the hell out of my way. If it had been a normal party, I suppose I would have fumed for a few minutes and then, if I things didn't speed up, charged off to another bar. But there was only one bar here, and I was stuck.

Stuck, that is, until I realized there were some Platform stickers in my pocket. Have you seen Platform's current stickers? (We'll send you some, if you ask for them by email.) They're orange circles with a multi-dimensional black-and-white "P" in the center, and they're big. How great one of these stickers might look on this guy's back left shoulder, I thought. Surrepticiously I reached into my pocket, withdrew a sticker, discreetly cracked and peeled off the backing, and palmed the thing, while continuing to look around, smiling. Then, with military precision, I executed a half-turn to the left, as if to wave to a friend across the room, bumping the guy gently, then apologizing with a friendly "Sorry!" and a manly pat on the shoulder. When I withdrew my hand, the sticker was right where I wanted it.

Later, I saw the guy circulating, talking with friends. The sticker was still on his shoulder. Fucking jerk, I thought. Did I feel proud? No way. Vindicated? Not particularly. No, by that time, I'd sipped most of my triple and was enjoying was how easy it was to turn a highly-paid pretty boy into a billboard for my company. What other strategic stickering opportunities might this party hold, I wondered....

AMERICA'S #1 TOXIC POLLUTER POKED SILLY IN "THE AWFUL TRUTH"

1999-05-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

Since we're total fans of crusader/filmmaker/people's philosopher-activist Michael Moore, we wanna remind you again to watch his show "The Awful Truth" tomorrow night (Sunday) at 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. ET (6 p.m. and 10 p.m. PT) on Bravo. If you don't have Bravo, this show is probably a good excuse to get it.

This week Moore gives his "Man of the Year" award to the guy he's singled out as the #1 toxic air polluter in the country: Ira Rennert. Rennert is chairman of the Renco Group, whose subsidiary, Magcorp (Magnesium Corporation of America), is belching tons of awful shit into the air from a sci-fi-movie-type mega plant near Salt Lake City, Utah. Conveniently for fun-making purposes, Rennert is also building one of the largest homes in the country, in Sagaponack, New York. Among other things that piss Moore off, the house has 39 bathrooms.

Moore's been needling Rennert for quite some time, with his entertaining and totally righteous blend of showmanship, moral solidity, and common sense. Rennert's got a restraining order against him-- which shows that a powerful environmental defiler can also be kinda weak-- so Moore may come no closer than 150 feet to Rennert, whose office is in Rockefeller Center. Which meant that when Conan O'Brien wanted to interview Moore, he had to shout questions out of the 9th-floor window of his Rockefeller Center studio, down to Moore, on the street.

What's mystifying is that, in another sphere, Rennert pays close attention to ethics: as a Jewish community leader and chief sponsor of the Orthodox Caucus's Torah Ethics Project. "We face up to tough issues" goes the project's motto; its Statement of Conscience urges "the use of respectful and sensitive speech and behavior toward all men and women, Jewish and non-Jewish, in private as well as in public."

Now this goes way beyond fun-making purposes. Rennert apparently needs some help in reconciling his ethical activism with his industrial sloppiness. If you can provide any help, we think it's your responsibility to do so. You may write Rennert at Renco Group, Inc., xx Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10111-0100. Or you can try to get him on the phone at 212-xxx-xxxx.

Check out tomorrow night's "Awful Truth" first, though. Just to see what the best kind of activism looks like.

What's Up With... MTV's Wack New Ad Campaign

1999-03-26T08:28:00.000-08:00

Just when you thought MTV was as weak as it could possibly be, it goes and gets weaker. The channel's new ad campaign was recently introduced in the streets of New York: a series of posters each featuring a made-up slang word and its supposed definition, as in "bingo" equals "sex," "salt" equals "money," and "round" equals "cool." The MTV logo and a tagline ("Stay Tuned") complete the design.

When we first saw the posters, we thought, "What? We never heard of that." Then, with a rush of embarrassment for MTV, we figured out the advertising agency/creative brainstorming session-type logic that produced the pairs. It would hard to overstate the queasiness this campaign has produced among 14-to-29-year-old we've talked to-- young New Yorkers who, until now, had accepted MTV as a harmless spot to rest when they're flipping through TV channels and need to drop the remote to pick up a slice of pizza. You could practically feel the MTV brand slipping down on people's mental lists from "Can Tolerate" to "Must Actively Screen Out."

The new campaign couldn't be good for business, could it? Well, it seems that MTV thinks it could. In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Brian Bacino, a creative director at Foote Cone & Belding/San Francisco, the advertising company that helped MTV dream up the new campaign, noted that the ads were not even aimed at viewers, but at the "media buyers and decision-makers" who buy advertising there-- folks who are supposed to get the message that since MTV is so very buzz-o-genic, it makes things cool: sneakers, jeans, movies, iced tea beverages, phoney slang words.

"If I'm running a big company I don't have to understand these people-- I can rely on MTV to do it for me," chirped Brian, confirming a major reason why advertising is fading off the radar of younger consumers: corporate cynicism and detachment from reality.

The campaign won't appear on TV, because, as the New Yorker's Leslie Savan delicately puts it, "the artificial argot might be... something that the MTV audience could make fun of." Too late, guys. Everyone's already making fun. So ya better put away the market research, quiet down that creative team that thinks it's "so young we can kind of focus-group as we create," and start hyping your programming in a way that isn't all tragically hip. (Oh yeah, and get some cool programming, too.) Unless you want the slang word "MTV" to mean "dangerously wack on a planetary scale," instead of just "amusingly lame."

P4M SINGLE REVIEW: Raven-Symone "With A Child's Heart"

1999-03-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

We're not mean, but we wanted SO BAD to hate the new single by Raven-Symone we were sent, "With A Child's Heart." Our policy, you see, is kinda neg on the "uncontrollably cute and adorable," which is how Raven's character Nicole, on "Hanging With Mr. Cooper" was described in the press release that accompanied the single. You remember Raven, right? "America's most adorable granddaughter to television's best loved dad, Cosby" (also from the press release)? An album, Here's To New Dreams released at the age of six?

But we listened to the single, and you know what? "With A Child's Heart" is... cute. Not hard to listen to at all. Like a really expensive soft-drink commercial. No, even better. The musical scientists who cooked up the ditty (Jerome "Rome" Jefferson, Vickie Basemore, Henry Cosby, and Silvia Moore) and the production scientists who are serving it up (Ray Blaize, Paul K Walker, Tom McGee, Rogelia Wilson, Tony "T.W." Williams) have done a fine job of crafting a nice property for their now 13-year-old star, even if they did freight the song unnecessarily with emotional blackmail in the form of a musical quote from a nursery song ("sol-sol-mi-la sol mi") and lyrics like "Nothin's gonna get me down," "A child's heart needs love," and several lines from the prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep..."

Moreover, Raven's voice is promising. A bit of Brandi, a bit of Madonna. But behind those influences-- and behind the potential gothic horror of trading on youth-and-innocence, a la Michael Jackson and Jon Benet Ramsey-- is something deeper, wiser, more honest; something un-sugarcoatable that we're gonna be looking for when Raven's new album, Undeniable, arrives in April.

P4M ALBUM REVIEW: Dubtribe Bryant Street

1999-02-16T09:42:00.000-08:00

Up.

That's Dubtribe Sound System in a nutshell. And they're not to be dismissed just 'cause listening to them is so fucking... affirmational. They're not edgey, in the culture-expandingly dangerous sense of the term, though Dubtribe geniuses Sunshine Jones and Moonbeam Jones do have a knack for doing something fresh when fueling their propulsive, "next-pop" mechanics with a mix of contemporary music forms (house, techno, neo-funk, etc.). But their stuff does bring legendarily wide-ranging audiences close to the brink of some kind of communal, existential thrill, in which suddenly you realize, Yeah, the body is nothing but a mass of irritable substance, and joy should always be the chief irritant.

For the past two years there was some business drama that kept Dubtribe from releasing a new album. But now there's Bryant Street, dropping from Jive Electro on February 23. Conga- and bongo-charged, the album definitely belongs in your current party mix, definitely belongs in your convertible, as a leavening agent amidst all the more heavily analytical or intellectual matter. Look for Dubtribe on their major North American tour, starting next week and running through April 30. Will you have good time, when Sunshine and Moonbeam bring their stuff to town? Oh, positively.

The Opinionator On... The Murder of Amadou Diallo

1999-02-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

Forty-one shots. As you've probably heard by now, that's what four New York police officers judged appropriate last Thursday to shower on an unarmed 22-year-old man from the Bronx, Amadou Diallo, at the door of his building on what the New York Times described as a "worn but well-kept" block" of Wheeler Avenue. Nineteen bullets reached Diallo, who died. The cops said they had been chasing a rapist. A recent immigrant from Guinea, Diallo had never been in trouble with the law, and has been described all over the media by friends and neighbors as a friendly, hard-working man.

Little has been done since Sunday's huge rally outside Diallo's home-- at which speakers like Al Sharpton raised the necessary questions from the mike, while demonstrators expressed themselves angrily amidst patrolling police officers. Yes, a state grand jury is convening this week to determine whether the officers should be tried criminally. NAACP president Kweisi Mfume has called on U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to keep an eye on the investigation that's been launched by the Bronx District Attorney's office. But by "little" we mean that no squad cars or police stations have been set on fire; no officers have been ambushed; no vengeful chorus has yet arisen from the throats of New Yorkers ashamed of, and sickened by, the fates of Michael Jones and Abner Louima and others who suffer police prejudice and brutality under far less public circumstances than Diallo's.

It's only February, though. Historically, in times of acute struggle, the temperateness of spring and summer affords several... more incendiary alternatives for action.

P4M MOVIE REVIEW: Arlington Road

1999-01-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

We checked out an advance screening of a excitingly disturbing thriller called Arlington Road, coming in March, the story of a nice professor (Jeff Bridges) living in suburban Washington D.C., whose new, squeaky-nice, all-American neighbors (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack) may or may not be militia-type, anti-U.S. government terrorists. Tautly directed by Mark Pellington (Going All The Way), the film builds on some of our most cherished strains of national anxiety (and shows at least one VIB-- Very Important Building-- being blown up, but the real shudder-inducer is the dynamite score by Angelo Badalamenti (Blue Velvet) and soundscapers extraordinaire, Tomandandy: pure sonic paranoia.

P4M BOOK REVIEW: Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula Magazine

1998-11-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

For five years, Coagula has been puncturing art-world hype and pretension, sometimes through wit, sometimes through rigorous analysis, and sometimes through sheer, relentless bad-ass attitude. With features like "Most Obnoxious People In The Art World," and "Most Overrated Artists of the 20th Century," the bi-monthly journal ("the National Enquirer of the art world"-- New York Post) has ruffled some fancy feathers, including those of dealer-and-shoe collector Mary Boone, artist-and-film buff Julian Schnabel, and writer-and-banquette warmer Anthony Haden-Guest. The journal has also championed the causes of some edgey artists who have been underappreciated by squeam-bots, commodity-lovers, and theory-snobs: blood-spilling cult fave Ron Athey, Filipino activist/expressionist Manuel Ocampo. Occasionally, editors Mat Gleason and "Janet Preston" (Charlie Finch) can be butt-headedly wrong, but who the fuck cares? In a pure white gallery full of Persons In Black, sometimes somebody's just gotta fart. Get a whiff with this new paperback compilation of Coagula's greatest hits.

Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press), $19.95. Available November 15.